Below are the answers to some of your most frequent questions.

Why do Connecting Cultures journeys go into desert and mountain environments?

The Connecting Cultures programme is based upon the extremely successful Wilderness Leadership School set up in South Africa by Dr. Ian Player in 1958. Dr. Player is the pioneer of multiracial environmental education, and has taken over 30,000 young people from different social backgrounds on short journeys into the bush to promote face to face dialogue and understanding.

Away from the distractions of everyday life, the results were extraordinary. As Dr. Player says, 'Once in the wilderness, one can observe that attitudes change significantly. Cultural differences become unimportant, barriers are removed and people begin to see each other as people.

Youth centred organisations such as Outward Bound and BSES Expeditions have long recognised and utilised the power of the wilderness as a vehicle for learning.

How are the young people selected?

Thanks to the support of corporate sponsors such as DHL, and charitable organisations such as the MBI Foundation, Connecting Cultures is open to anyone irrespective of their financial background and social status.

Connecting Cultures is run as a part time, voluntary operation. Currently, young people are selected from a variety of sources, mainly using the respective Ministry of Education/UNESCO offices who will contact schools and short list potential candidates. The ideal candidate would be aged 17-25, with an interest in international affairs and a good command of English or Arabic. Candidates should be good ambassadors for their respective country, and ideally be in a position to potentially influence others now or in the future.

If funding can be secured, it is hoped that we may be in a position to open up Connecting Cultures journeys to general applicants in the future.

Can you explain the significance of the Connecting Cultures logo?

Connecting Cultures is all about dialogue, and face to face communication. When we were thinking of a suitable logo, a quote from TE Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, caught our eye. The logo, we hope, reflects the quote below;

…. for the ordinary Arab, the hearth was a university, about which their world passed and where they heard the best talk, the news of their tribe, its poems, histories, love tales, lawsuits and bargainings. By such constant sharing in the hearth councils they grew up masters of expression, dialecticians, orators, able to sit with dignity in any gathering and never at a loss for moving words….

What issues are discussed on a Connecting Cultures journey?

A wise old Saudi sage in Jeddah once told me that in his view, religion is a private issue between one person and their god, and it should not affect the way two people look at each other. We agree.

On Connecting Cultures journeys, whilst we may talk about religion, and educate each other about our respective countries, we try to focus more on what we have in common, rather than what divides us. We identify the most important things in our lives, discuss the core human values we admire, and the future world we aspire to.

The key aim of Connecting Cultures is to reduce cultural polarisation; to do that we must go further than just identify shared values. Discussion ultimately focuses on why young people think their respective cultures misunderstand each other, and where the misconceptions may originate, and identifying what they can do as educated young ambassadors to influence others and make the world a better place when they return home.

Hopefully, having done all this, we have planted seeds for a better future.