Celebration of cultures at Global Village event

Energy Saturday 26/March/2016 19:59 PM
By: Times News Service
Celebration of cultures at Global Village event

Muscat: AIESEC in Oman recently held its popular Global Village, which is the largest celebration of cultures from around the world, where AIESEC interns and members in Oman showcased their country’s unique cultures, including their food, dance, song, dress, language and music at the Muscat Grand Mall.
“The Global Village encourages social sustainability, world awareness, and cultural understanding.
It revives the general concept of the world being a ‘global village’ and inspires people to understand and appreciate the uniqueness and differences of each other, which further contributes to peace,” said Omar Mohammed, organizing Committee Vice President of public relations and marketing.
“It is my first time to learn about Estonia. I just saw a lot of pictures from Estonia and Kazakhstan. I never imagined they look like this,” said one visitor.
Marice from Estonia, who is also a member of AIESEC in Oman, said she was amazed to see the rich cultural diversity displayed by the interns. “People don’t know us very well and we don’t know them very well, so we are havingan exchange here. This year, 12 or 13 interns took part from 10 different countries. Visitors can get a glimpse of several international cultures at our global village, rather than having to go to the countries physically,” said Marice.
The country with the highest number of participants was Pakistan, having eight interns. “They had an amazing performance and dance, and their food was delicious, too. Apart from Pakistan, we have the Netherlands, Thailand, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Egypt, Estonia, along with Oman,India and Pakistan,” noted Omar.
Linda de Wit has been an intern with AIESEC Oman for five weeks and she said she was delighted at the curiosity visitors showed while learning about her culture. “I totally love the weather here, the people and the food. I and two other Dutch participants have a table here and we were representing our country with Dutch souvenirs and food.”
AIESEC is an international non-governmental not-for-profit organization that provides young people with leadership development and cross-cultural global internships and volunteer exchange experiences, with a focus to empower young people so they can make a positive impact on society.