JAMK University of Applied Sciences

Finland

Jyväskylä

JAMK University of Applied Sciences
PO BOX 207
FI-40101 Jyväskylä
Finland

- Intercultural competences activities for staff
- Non formal education activities for students

- Newly arrived refugees
- Refugees of second generation
- Students
- University staff (academic and administrative)

diversophy® New Horizons emerged from a JAMK student project formed as a response to the refugee crisis in Finland. The game is intended to serve as a training activity that can stand alone or be an integral part of a larger training program on diversity, global management, and intercultural communication.

The game empowers those who play it to work and communicate constructively across differences. The game takes players from “ethnocentricity” — being centered in one’s own culture, the way we find ourselves when we first face diversity — to “diversophy”, a state of higher cultural sensitivity and skill.

The game facilitates interaction and dialogue through game play, with the overall goal of increasing awareness, understanding and empathy between communities and between individuals residing in Finland.The diversophy® New Horizons training game celebrates the present and future human diversity within Finland. Diversity in this case comprises all people in Finland including past, present and future newcomers, as well as those who are visiting from outside of Finland as students or professionals.

The project involves finding common grounds to adapt to the changing composition of local populations. The game creation project has been embedded in a cross-cultural management course that has included international exchange students, Finnish and international degree students, and asylum seekers registered as open university students who have received academic credit for their participation.

The diversophy® game is the product of ongoing collaboration between students and teachers at JAMK University of Applied Sciences and George Simons International, the originator of the diverso-phy® series of cultural training games.

The original New Horizons game is currently in use in at high schools and universities, vocational schools, cultural centres, NGOs, and libraries in Finland, and also has registered users in forty-eight nations.