At Plan Zero we have set ourselves a challenge: to ensure that your educational trip is full of truly meaningful intercultural experiences. And why is this so important? Travelling offers an unrivalled opportunity to enhance your intercultural skills, essential abilities that will help you face the challenges of an increasingly interconnected and multicultural world.
Let’s take a look at the core intercultural competences presented by UNESCO’s “Investing in Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Dialogue” text. At first glance, these concepts may seem simple, but by exploring them in more depth, you will discover their immense potential.

The Basics: Listen, Dialogue and Wonder
Intercultural skills: Listen 🙉
Listening involves “tuning into an experience.” Tuning in is experiencing another culture and accepting the truth of that other culture. It is allowing the other culture and its truth to affect me directly, to penetrate me, to change me, to transform me. Ultimately, it is about approaching the other from within.
This listening experience brings us new answers to existing questions and, more importantly, inspires us to ask new questions and challenge our deep-rooted prejudices, shaking the foundations of our beliefs. This is how we begin to consider new perspectives on life and understand new possibilities.
Intercultural skills: Dialogue 🦜
Dialogue is born from the connection we establish with others and with ourselves. Through dialogue, we achieve greater self-knowledge and clarity about our own perspectives and points of view. In this process, we also become aware of our capabilities, of the potential that lies within us. Intercultural dialogue marks the beginning of a process of “attuning to the other.” Essentially, it consists of opening ourselves to the other, which creates the opportunity to experience mutual enrichment based on sincere intention.
Intercultural skills: Wonder 😲
Wonder is the ability we have to be struck by difference. It is a state of mind we must constantly cultivate, especially in the information age, where we tend to believe we have seen it all.
Wonder represents a form of “active openness,” in which we do not reduce others to a scale of similarity or difference with ourselves. By cultivating this ability, interculturality becomes a permanent discovery, a perpetual wonder, a recognition of the other as a source of wealth that we can discover.
Pack your bags and get ready to live unforgettable experiences. Let’s Listen, Dialogue and Wonder around the world!
At Plan Zero we can help you create your travel plan to go abroad, learn English and live unique experiences. Tell us your story and we will help you draw up the best plan for you.
Feel free to read the full text and practice your English at the UNESCO Digital Library: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000185202


