Posts Tagged "hospitable"

Multicultural awareness and sport event. Which benefits bring international sport’s events?

We are living in more global and multicultural environment. This is the case even for the countries which are not very multicultural in population like for example Poland or countries which are not open for traveling and migration. But we are all connected with the world and other cultures via TV and Internet, and this situation requires from us more intercultural competencies. I like the definition of intercultural competencies of Jane M. Bennett as follows: “Intercultural competence; a set of cognitive, affective and behavioural skills and characteristics that support effective and appropriate interaction in a variety of cultural contexts.”  How UEFA Euro 2012 Championship has boosted intercultural competencies of Polish people? Some people might have reasoning the aim of such costly events, especially in time of crises. This question was also raised in Poland, the media have asked before and after the EURO 2012 for the benefits of the event. Most of people have founded that organizing the Euro 2012 was a good idea. This information was wildly spread, but very rare you could read WHY people find organizing Euro 2012 as beneficial for Poland.  For me the list of them is quite large. Most of the people have quoted that the new stadiums, especially that in Warsaw, called by many foreign journalists the most beautiful stadium in Europe and the new highways are the biggest benefits. Many journalist has proclaimed that Poland did a civilization step forward. I agree with this claim, but I think that the most valuable benefit of Euro 2012 we did,, was in regards to social multicultural awareness of Poles. We have gained thousands of volunteers working with foreign visitors who have experienced different culture, we have gained outlook how the fans of different nationalities behave and we have experienced that people can unite on something higher than the score of the match and their sympathy to a national football team. We have learned that people can unite on common value – friendship and joy of being together. It was really heart-warming to see how the fans from the country, which has lost the match, celebrate together with fans of the country, which has won.  People on the streets and the cafes have found...