[Due to] the valuable connections we made online and the strong sense of unity and belonging that we created as a team, I know now that understanding people and cultures is anything but an independent pursuit; it is an open-ended and open-invite journey that is rewarding and meaningful to me and to the world.

[We] were touched by the stories of the women artisans [in Serbia] who had gone through so much to pursue and be successful at their trade, many of them supporting their family on their single income.

The most surprising part to me was witnessing the strong and independent spirit of the Egyptian women. In America there are so many stereotypes about Muslim countries and their politics towards women. Meeting Egyptian women who call themselves feminists and choose not to wear the hijab despite mainstream influences. I found this intriguing and captivating, knowing that the women there have such diverse mindsets and choose what works for them.

Cultural heritage preservation…gives us the sense of where we were, and gives the sense of belonging and identity…This exchange program helped me to professionally see the practical approach on how different NGOs tackle the issues both of tangible and intangible heritage and I got really good ideas what we could do in Serbia based on the American model.

We can learn from the past in order to enrich our present and future lives. In particular, cultural heritage preservation can help keep traditions, skills, and creative knowledge alive. The exchange program left me more committed to trying to get others to see the importance of learning about their own culture and those of others.

With this exchange I understood my deaf identity a lot more and how I want to change the world for deaf people. Before this exchange I was kind of indifferent to my deaf identity in the sense where it felt normal, since I’ve been around deaf people my whole life coming from a seven-generation deaf family, deaf schools, etc. I did not really understand the impacts of deaf clubs, Gallaudet University, and accessibility. But the Belgian participants made me really see what being deaf in a majority hearing world is like.

[T]he experience really put an exclamation point on the necessity of finding ways for cultural heritage experiences to become much more widely available and inclusive, in ways that are meaningful in people’s contemporary lives, rather than as an experience of a heritage frozen in time.

It is important because a lot of times that is how people completely disconnect from their culture and origins. In the program it was amazing for me to see how many languages the India group knew, including their villages’ languages. They’ve kept their culture alive through language for hundreds of years while so many native languages here in New Mexico are rarely ever known.