Hope lies in communication

Last night one of our new members asked me if there was AIESEC in Israel. I replied that we once were there (I think it was up until the early 90s). I also said that it could perhaps be better for us not to have a presence in Israel as it would have made it very difficult to operate in the other Arab states... Our discussion continued about the benefits of understanding foreign cultures. To paraphrase: 'how can there possibly be war in todays world, we have high levels of communications technology... couldn't they just pick up the phone'...

The conversation then moved on to the feeling one gets at an AIESEC global conference... 500 people, 95 countries, 10 days, coming together to discuss a relevant global issue. Lunch times are my favourite: here you see people eating, drinking and laughing together, comparing countries, laughing at cultural traits and generally just living it up.

This slight conversation last night demonstrated that there are people here that are thinking pro-actively about where their country should be. Now more than ever I know that expanding to these countries is a necessary step for AIESEC to have a truely global reach.