Cultural Global Labs
Achieving Growth Through Stories, Connection, and Transformation
June 15-19, 2020
Emigration, Immigration and Identity
Migration touches and affects millions of people every year. The journey is far more than just a geographical move. It is a shift in people's identity and energy as it puts on hold, for a long time, most of their fundamental human needs. Max-Neef and Hope’s Wheel of Fundamental Human Needs is a powerful tool used to explore the basics any person, and therefore society, needs in order to live a healthy life. This tool provides a framework for understanding the many and deep implications of migration on a person’s life energy. It also gives us an indication regarding the complexity of the challenge for the migrant and for the host community. Through the wheel, the concept of cultural integration gets a new meaning and and a new perspective. [more…]
Services and main themes of work
Services
Trainings
Conception of training programs
Development of pedagogical materials
Training of trainers
Coaching
Supervision
Facilitated dialoguesdialogue
The main themes of my work
Intercultural communication
Approaches to conflict across cultures
Team, teambuilding, multicultural teambuilding
Management in a multicultural setting
Interreligious dialogue
Cultural identity
Multicultural identity
Migration and integration
Participatory approach to community development
Véronique Schoeffel
I grew up in Alsace, a bilingual region of France. My childhood in that region taught me to navigate between two languages and to develop from early on a multicultural identity. Thus, studying at the School for Translation and Interpretation at the University in Geneva seemed a natural next-step.
The five years I spent in South Africa confronted me with the complexity of intercultural communication, and with the difficulty of understanding one another across cultures. I realized then that intercultural competence was a key to the sustainability of my work in international development. Back in Switzerland, I dedicated many years working with organisations active in the field of development, sensitizing them to the importance of intercultural competence in their work.
In the past few years, my field of work has expanded beyond international development. It now also reaches the fields of health, education, religious bodies, administration, and corporations.
I am deeply convinced that interreligious competence is not only a key to professional and economic success. It is, far more importantly, a contribution to peace in a world that needs it more than ever.