Mondialogo
By Colin Hill, Grade 10
Mondialogo can be broken down into two words, "Mond(e)" which is French for "World" and "Dialogo" which is Spanish for "I engage in dialogue". Mondialogo therefore means "I engage in dialogue with the world". While this could mean, at AIS, just talking to a PE teacher, Mondialogo is actually the largest inter-school competition in the world, attracting 2,600 schools and over 35,000 students from a variety of exotic locales.
The contest, initiated by DaimlerChrysler and UNESCO in 2003, is the world's largest global contest on intercultural dialogue. Its aim is to encourage dialogue between students from different cultures, paired with each other to work across continents on a joint project. The cooperation is intended to develop understanding, tolerance and friendship between people with different cultural, religious and linguistic backgrounds.
The AIS model and the competition aims are extremely compatible; even so, it is quite a feat to be named finalist, one of the top 50 teams, for two years in a row. A panel of culture experts endorsed by UNESCO and DaimlerChrysler recently announced that the collaboration between AIS and Beijing School 57 merited finalist status and an invitation, all expenses paid, to the Symposium in Rome, Italy. There, much like at AIS, students will gather from all over the world to discuss culture, dialogue, and the world as a whole.
The project itself was quite a work of art. The students from Beijing created a tour book of Atlanta and AIS students in turn created a tour book of Beijing. Not only were the students forced to communicate and analyze culture, it also emphasizes the important principles of inter-dependence and globalization. The final product ventured deeply into subjects ranging from music to school to holidays.
As mentioned earlier, this is not the first time AIS and its partner school have been nominated as a finalist. In our first year, Andrea Feuer (now a freshman at Yale) went to Barcelona with Mr. Bechtel as representatives of the AIS finalist team. The continued success of the team reflects wonderfully on our community and on the individuals on the team: Hannah Shore, Quitterie Gounot, Nik Beisert, Colin Hill, and last year’s team members Andrea Feuer and Maxine Litré.
So, whether it is communicating with an AIS teacher learning English or with young adults in China, the lesson is all the same. Struggling to understand another culture through dialogue is an essential skill, and this is a skill that both AIS and Mondialogo strive to provide.
