International House Berkeley

transparency and collaboration often happen on a hit-or-miss basis. Creating shared habits of thought and action — a culture — takes sustained intention over time. is is the process that has been sparked with the creation of the Chief of I-House Operations position. On the other side, e Center for Intercultural Leadership (CIL) was born out of research, mostly from the world of study abroad. is research has shown that, while ethnocentrism can be reduced simply by bringing together people from varied backgrounds, as I-House has done so well for so long, the process can be accelerated significantly through targeted interventions such as the intercultural training opportunities that will be provided by the CIL. At I-House, we have the privilege of hosting some of the brightest students and scholars from all over the world — people who will go on to significant leadership positions once they have left. We owe it to them to equip them as best we can with awareness and skills that will allow them to be maximally effective as global leaders. We are also excited to be able to continue to offer trainings to other UC Berkeley units, and to organizations beyond the campus. I will conclude with a personal note: I have never seen a community like I-House, and words fail me when I try to express how grateful I am for the opportunity to help shape its future, and how excited I am that we are embarking on all these changes. n Alinaya (Aya) Fabros returned to live at I-House and shared a report on her Davis Project for Peace that took place in one of the hardest-hit areas of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. For Project Creativity Camp, Aya prepared and led a series of workshops for students and teachers to revitalize the school environment as a safe and peaceful space of learning, devoid of fear and uncertainty. Using various media, students told stories resulting in learning modules to be used as pedagogical tools by numerous teachers in the area. Officials and teachers recognized this project as a valuable contribution to their community. A participant wrote, "Creativity Camp is very useful for me as a teacher and for the pupils who were able to attend . . . You brought immeasurable help to the school." Torben Fischer (IH 2013-14) writes, "I was inspired by Hannah Yang's presentation of the Davis Peace Project at the Sunday Supper last term.rough intense discussions with Manuel Schulze (IH 2013), who lived across the hall, the idea of RECYCLE UP! – a project tackling the plastic waste problem in Ghana, emerged." Torben and Manuel spent part of their summer in Ghana, leading a social and environmental entrepreneurship project with 30 high school students. Six teams designed projects to educate the community and implement solutions for plastic waste. Two winning teams were selected: the 1st place team created a machine to convert plastic into fuel. e 2nd place team will implement a plastic management system in schools in Kumasi. To learn more, visit: recycleupghana.wordpress.com. n THE CULTURE CORNER Seeing Green by Jason Patent I have had a lot of firsts at I-House these past few months, and one of the most enjoyable of these was attending a new resident orientation retreat. There I had the opportunity to lead a brief intercultural leadership training with the 55 residents in attendance. In doing so, I am reminded about what is special about our community. Jess Delegencia, Breidi Truscott Roberts and I designed the training using a conceptual model called Approaching Differences. The gist of the model is that when confronted with difference, challenging emotions sometimes arise: frustration, confusion, anger and others. The model involves a red zone and a green zone, both before and after an encounter with difference. In such an encounter, the intercultural leader is faced with two sets of questions. First, how do I recognize and respond to these emotions? Will I go to the red zone and wall myself off, or to the green zone, where I might explore new ways of connecting and collaborating? Second, how can I approach an encounter from the green, so that things are less likely to end up in the red? At the retreat, after a series of rapid-fire conversations in pairs and small groups about differences and similarities, we gathered to debrief. Having led dozens of such conversations over the years, what struck me most about the debrief was the high level of awareness and thoughtfulness that already exists among I-House residents. I cannot say I was surprised, given who I know our resident body to be. I can say, though, that this was the first time I felt in such a visceral way the extraordinarily high level of thinking and, despite their youth, experience that our residents bring to conversations about intercultural leadership. With the advent of the Center for Intercultural Leadership, I-House has an opportunity to build on this broad, deep and strong foundation, taking intercultural leadership to new levels, and preparing our residents to live lives and to do work that will accelerate the creation, per the I-House mission, of a more tolerant and peaceful world. n Visit ihouse.berkeley.edu/cil for more information. 4 International House Times Two Big Roles....One Big Hat Continued from page 1. Davis Peace Projects 2014: Updates from Afar CIL team, from left: Jason Patent, Jess Delegencia & Breidi Truscott Roberts e Davis Projects for Peace, founded by Kathryn Wasserman Davis, awards $10,000 grants to young people around the world for creative projects working towards peace.

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