Facebook Application Intercultural

In 2009, Facebook Application Intercultural was recognized by the World Summit Youth Award as a best practice example in e-content and technological creativity in the category “Create your culture”. We believe that information, knowledge and education are some of the basic means of fighting poverty and discrimination. Using “Intercultural“, young people in particular are encouraged to be aware of the way of living in many other different and often less affluent countries. Very young users can make their first acquaintance with other cultures by simply watching slideshows and making their first international contacts. Others might practice languages by communicating with other Intercultural users or find accommodation when travelling by using the integrated hospitality service which enables the user to go beyond the borders of virtuality. With our Facebook application we want to enable young people all over the globe to get to know each other and we aim at expanding our platform to reach even more people.

Through the World Summit Youth Award we were able to participate in the WSA and UNDESA GAID events in Monterrey, Mexico, from September 2nd to September 5th, 2009. The WSYA and UNDESA GAID events in Mexico were a unique opportunity to meet and connect with WSYA winners and other young creatives to exchange ideas, which was great. We did not just meet new people, we got new friends. Additionally we met ICT experts, multimedia producers as well as government and business leaders, and were able to participate in several brilliant workshops. Our new friends helped us to promote our application in their community. As a result we got a lot of new users and their number is still increasing. Further we had the idea to create a platform for all the WSYA Winners and Runners Up to stay connected, to share ideas and experiences longer. Working together with the WSYA we realised this idea: Every applicant to the Award can now join the Youth Award "Friends"-site at http://friends.youthaward.org and present his/her project there. Our vision is to make “Intercultural” the application number one on Facebook, encouraging international relationships, mutual understanding, tolerance and solidarity and we want to thank the WSYA for the opportunity to take further steps.