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The Ben Franklin Transatlantic Fellows Summer Institute 2013
By Filippa Sofia Braarud
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”
These were once the words of Benjamin Franklin, perceived as one of the most influential Americans in the
US’ history. As an author, inventor, printer, diplomat and politician he has inspired individuals, organizations
and institutions until this day. This is notably the case with the Ben Franklin Transatlantic Fellows (BFTF)
Summer Institute, which I was incredibly fortunate to participate in this summer. This institute takes place in
North Carolina every year, at Wake Forest University, where it gathers young leaders from all over Europe
and the US to interact and learn about politics, social entrepreneurship, diplomacy and business during one
month. This year we also went on a study trip to Philadelphia and Washington DC. This letter is a tribute to
the Ben Franklin Summer institute and what we experienced here.
Sunday morning, 30th of June, was the time for the departure from Oslo, directly to New York, where I
landed at Newark Airport. This was the longest flight I had ever experienced, and the integrated screens
and unlimited access to newly released movies came in handy as the flight lasted for eight hours. Once at
Newark and scrupulously examined through the Immigration Control, I eventually met up with some of the
other BFTF fellows coming from Europe, in order to catch the transit flight to Greensboro. It turned out that
this flight was delayed for another seven hours, so we had the time to get to know each other better. After a
seven hour wait we flew to Greensboro, where we met with our host-families for the first time. They then
drove us to the campus at Wake Forest University – which was absolutely breathtaking:
The colleges one can see in American movies are honestly nothing in comparison to experiencing Wake
Forest University in reality. Immediately after entering the campus, one is bluntly overwhelmed by the huge
trees and buildings which are built according to traditional, Greek architecture and called the Alfa, Beta,
Delta and Kappa house. The apartments we were given were huge, and I shared apartment with Ana from
Georgia, Pille-Riin from Estonia and Annelies from Belgium. After we woke up to the first day, July 1st, we
were introduced to the cafeteria, “The Pit”, the staff and all the participants in addition to the program for the
next month to come. We started classes after lunch, the first class called “Social Entrepreneurship”. These
classes were led by professor Len Neighbours, which gave an extremely interesting introduction to
capitalism, ideologies, politics in the EU in comparison to in the US, economical problems and social
entrepreneurship. He also explained that the main goal throughout the program was to develop a personal
project which we were to implement in our own societies back in our home countries.
Afterwards, there was a Scavenger Hunt, where we were supposed to take photos all over the campus, in
order to get to know the campus and each other:
July 3rd was the day of the International Dinner, where the different countries were represented by a
traditional dish, such as French “Quiche Lorraine”, Italian “Tiramisu”, British “Lemon Curd Ice”, Bulgarian
“Satsivi”, Bosnian “Lokum” and so on. I made Norwegian “Smoked Salmon Rotollos”, to let everybody taste
our precious salmon. They consist of tortillas with a layer of Philadelphia cheese (mixed with dill), and a thin
slice of smoked salmon, rolled and chopped into pieces with toothpicks in. We met up with our host-families
once more and had a really nice time at the table while tasting new flavors and spices.
The most important day for all Americans, the 4th of July, we spent learning about international relations
and conflict solving in Alessandra Von Burg’s class “Conflict and Citizenship”. The main goal of this class
was to make us students present our own country, explain what the political situation was in our countries
at the moment, which conflicts that were ongoing and what kind of tensions that occurred between the
citizens, in addition to the countries’ will to participate in the EU. This was what the members of my group
could report on:
Ivan, Serbia
Former part of Yugoslavia, still experiencing tensions between ethnical groups
Has 8 regions, whereas Kosovo seeks independence
Perceives Russia as “brother in the east”, following orthodox traditions
Pro-EU, thinks that the EU has done great good and makes the member countries equal
James, the UK
Long story of the Pax Britannia, the colonies and the Head of the Commonwealth
Challenges internally between the union countries
Has a permanent seat and strong position in the NATO, EU and UN, although EU-skeptical
Chara, Greece (Crete)
Crete is, fortunately, self-efficient due to the olive oil production, which has saved them through the
economic crisis that has ravaged the rest of the country
Issues concerning illegal immigrants
Also concerned about the Macedonian conflict in Greece
Fjola – Republic of Macedonia (Skopje)
Struggling with the different ethnical tensions between Albanians (Muslims) and Macedonians
(orthodox)
Greece doesn’t want Macedonians to take part in elections – experiencing protests
The ongoing conflict concerning the identity policy and the claim of the name Macedonia
Xhenis, Albania
The last country of the Balkans to be liberated from the USSR (December 1990),
Tensions between Serbs and Albanians, and people with different religious beliefs
Takes part in NATO, but is currently not a EU member
Alanna, New Hampshire
Concerned about the environmental issues and making New Hampshire a sustainable society
Mihaela, Bulgaria
Sharing borders with Turkey, being very multicultural
Struggling with corrupted politicians, had a communistic-democratic President until 91
Member of the EU since 2007
Struggling with conflicts between Gipsies and Turks
Mehmet, Germany
Germans perceive their country as a developed democracy, led by socialists
Needs money to rebuild their economy – sceptical to the EU “equalization”
Still struggles between the former East and West Germany/Berlin
Tim, California
Introduced what he called “Wagians”, a term for white and asians
Problems with initial prejudice among the citizens, ethnical groups and non-assismilation
Oto, Slovenia
Peaceful, not many tensions, desbite many minorities, religions and languages
Coalitions in favor of the mobility in the EU, in 2004
Alina, Romania
Problems with the Romanians(majority) and Gipsies(minority), stigmatisation of the Gipsies as a
nomade tribe
Joined the EU in 2007
Annelies, Belgium
A “coalition” of three nationalities and national languages: Dutch, French and German
Founder of the EU in 1957
Albert II, the Crown Prince
Niklavs, Latvia
An EU member, leadership with German and Russian influence
Tensions between Latvians (majority) and Russians (minority), after the USSR sent Russians to
Latvia during the Sovjet period.
Filippa, Norway
Not part of the EU, Norwegians in strong opposition
Perceived one of the strongest democracies and a very pacifistic country
Labour party (social-democrats) in power at the moment, elections coming up during the fall 2013
Also struggling with extremist groups- and individuals, such as on July 22th in 2011
After the introductions, we eventually organized a simulation where we were divided into four fictional
countries, North, East, South and West, which were to discuss and debate about the final outcome of a
conflict. My group, consisting of Tim, Niklavs and Xhenis, governed the North, an authoritarian regime
struggling with a weak economy and questionable relations to the other regions. After developing unions
and signing treaties with the three countries, we used “our right by being an authoritarian regime not to
respect treaties” to go to nuclear intervention in the East, which was not a popular decision for the other
countries.
“The Democratic Republic of the Mighty Empire of the North” we entitled our country. We found it suitable.
Eventually, in the evening, we organized a barbecue to celebrate the 4th of July with real, American
traditions (which includes burgers, hotdogs, cupcakes, soccer in the rain, sparklers and fireworks!):
The evening was ended by discovering how to make drawings with light with the SLR camera and long
shutter-time, which Ivan from Serbia was a master at. He is undoubtedly a true artist.
The following day, July 5th, it was time for a new type of class, “Comparative Constitutionalism”. This class
was led by Professor John Dinan, who started off by giving a sentence by sentence explanation to the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. I have to recognize the value of knowing why we
actually celebrated the day before, and which values lies behind the word independence. It was also
interesting to see that the constitution was surprisingly vague; leaving it open to individual interpretation
and, according to some people, full of loopholes.
Then, we were to take a critical glance at the constitution, to spot possible loopholes such as in the second
amendment (the right of men to own and bear arms), the fifth amendment (non double-jeopardizing of the
life or limb of a man), and amendment eight (capital punishment) – and to make up our own set of political
and civil rights and liberties for our fictional country, a new, emerging democracy:
1) The right of people to non-discrimination including but not limited to race, gender, sexual
orientation, religion, belief, culture or age.
2) The right to be fairly treated in criminal proceedings in a trial consisting of six neutral jury
members and two professional judges, retrials are limited to three times (in order to avoid double-
jeopardizing and cases of vendetta).
3) The right of the people to express their speech freely in public and private areas with the
exception of putting other individuals in danger; inflicting their reputation, physical safety or freedom
of speech.
4) The right of the people to be provided with a chance to pursue their happiness in the terms of
accessing an education, health care, infrastructure, security and basic needs, including a healthy
environment.
5) The right of the people to own arms under a restriction of a certification, every person has the
right to life and the right to be in the control of their own body (to legalize abortion and prohibit
capital punishment).
6) In times of emergency situations some of the rights listed above could be limited for a certain
period.
Eventually, we ended the last day at Wake Forest before our study trip by organizing a debate about
whether the American Constitution would be the most suitable basis for a new, emerging democracy.
July 6th was the date of our departure for Philadelphia, PA, where we were going to stay until July 8th. We
left Wake Forest University by bus early in the morning and were literally on the road the whole day, with
several pit-stops along the route. The sight of Philadelphia arising in the horizon was amazing. The first
evening was spent dining at Hard Rock Café and gathering energy for the next morning.
In Philadelphia, we had numerous activities scheduled. The first tour we made was to the Franklin court,
where we were introduced to the historical memorial of Benjamin Franklin, the printer, inventor, politician,
Founding Father, ambassador to France and musician. His influence is truly prevailing in this city, and as
we went to visit the Printing Press where Franklin himself spent long periods of his lifetime, we were
provided with an insight in his hard work at one of the very first printing presses in America:
The process of printing one page with all the right characters, letters, ink, paper and muscle power, after
the idea of Gutenburg, turned out to be quite an interesting and demanding task. At the time, the printers
were leading a revolution for the once non-literate, providing the ordinary man with literature and mass
production of the Bible, the Constitution, the Legislation and so on. The Declaration of Independence was
used as an example (as seen over) of how the press actually works, and we got to witness the printing
process.
The next visit on the schedule was the Independence Hall, where we were taken on a guided tour in the
hall where the Founding Fathers wrote and ratified the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the
Constitution in 1787. After this, we headed to the Constitution Center, where we had an interesting,
interactive introduction to the American history from the Revolutionary War until today. We also had a visit
at the Chemical Heritage before leaving for Washington DC.
9th of July was the day of the NATO Simulation at the Department of State in Washington, where an
impressive amount of State Department officials were gathered. The intention of the simulation was to
recreate a discussion that the NATO members imaginably would have at the real NATO Council. The
debate presented was whether the threshold of the member countries’ foreign defence spending should be
at 2% of the countries’ GDP. The four countries represented were the US, the UK, Germany and Albania.
Our group presented Albania, which had the weakest economy and the most disadvantaged foundation for
excessive foreign defence spending. Albania has notably a high unemployment rate and a lack of progress
on EU membership, whereas Germany is currently resolving the euro zone crisis and balancing domestic
pressure with measures being taken to stabilize the euro zone. On the EU sceptical front we have the UK,
which also is decreasing its budget deficit, and is one of the strongest European contributors to the NATO.
The US, contributing over 70% of NATO’s budget, has a political grid-lock in Congress and also suffers
from sluggish economic growth and a high unemployment rate. The outcome of the discussion was that two
of the countries vetoed the proposition of a 2% threshold, due to the unstable Euro-zone economies - which
was, according to the State Department Officials, a credible outcome of a real NATO Council debate.
We were also presented to YSA, Youth Service America, which is a 25 year old organisation that
improves communities by increasing the number and the diversity of young people, aged 5 to 25, serving in
volunteery projects. Our group decided to create a social project where we bring forward an annual event
for first graders in high school called “Dignity Day” (which is an already implemented project in Norway),
where the intention is to make the students increasingly aware of values conserning human rights, gender
equality, bullying, environmental issues and volunteering in their own communities.
July 10th was the day we headed to the United States Capitol, which a symbol of the American people and
their government, the meeting place of the nation's legislature. The Capitol also houses an important
collection of American art, and it is an architectural achievement in its own right. It is a working office
building as well as a tourist attraction visited by millions every year.
Construction of the U.S. Capitol began in 1793. In November 1800, the U.S. Congress met in the first
completed portion, the north wing. In the 1850s, major extensions to the North and South ends of the
Capitol were authorized because of the great westward expansion of the U.S. and the resultant growth of
Congress. Since that time, the U.S. Capitol and its stately dome have become international symbols of the
U.S. representative democracy.1
After being taken to the Capital, we entered Washington’s famous Newseum, the museum of News. Once
inside, we were overwhelmed by the amount of things to see, listen to, read and feel. There were numerous
interactive exhibitions about everything related to news, media and technology. Especially was the
exhibition about the mysterious assassin of J.F Kennedy particularly interesting, in addition to a 4D movie
projection, a video booth where one could try to be a reporter, and so on. There was also an incredible
exhibition on the Pulitzer Prize, which was my personal favorite, where all the pictures that have won the
prize were exhibited and explained. Especially the picture of a starving Sudanese with a vulture lurking
behind, taken by Kevin Carter in 1994, moved me emotionally. It was taken by this exact camera, and led
to Kevin Carter’s suicide in 1995.
1 http://www.visitthecapitol.gov/about-the-capitol
After we eventually left the Newseum, after five hours spent here, we also got the opportunity to visit the
National Archives, where we saw the original examples of the Magna Carta, the Declaration of
Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Obviously, no photos were allowed to be taken.
We also went to see the Lincoln and the Vietnam Veteran Memorials:
Next stop on the schedule was The Washington Center, where we met Mars Hanna from Opower.
Marsden Hanna is a Manager of Regulatory Policy and Research at Opower, Inv., based in Arlington,
Virginia. His work focuses on international market assessment, where he provides strategic analysis and
insight into European energy regulatory environments to help expand Opower's business abroad. Opower
is the only customer engagement platform designed specifically for the utility industry which is deployed
around the globe, driving unprecedented levels of energy efficiency, demand response, Smart Grid
acceptance and customer affinity.
The second speaker up was Liz Reinert, who is the Associate Development Director at DC Central Kitchen.
DC Central Kitchen is a local, nonprofit organization which mission is to use food as a tool to strengthen
bodies, empower minds and build communities. Liz Reinert could tell us incredible stories about her own
experiences with the DC Central Kitchen and what it had meant to previous criminal individuals. Through
job training, healthy food distribution and local farm partnerships, DC Central Kitchen offers path-breaking
solutions to poverty, hunger and poor health. Since its founding in 1989 they have prepared 25 million
meals for their low-income and at-risk neighbors in Washington DC. Most importantly, their meals go out
with a message; that their main kitchen offers a rigorous Culinary Job Training program for unemployed
men and women who want to replace homelessness, addiction and incarceration with new careers and
changed lives.
The United States National Holocaust Museum Memorial
Once at the Holocaust Museum, we were taken to the “First Person” presentation, where we met Leon
Merrick, a holocaust survivor. Leon was the older of two boys born to a Jewish family in Zgierz, Poland, a
city well known for its textiles. In 1939, after Germany invaded Poland, Leon’s family left Zgierz for Lodz,
Poland. They were forced into a ghetto in 1940. The ghetto was in the city of Lodz. Four years later the
ghetto was closed and Leon was taken to a forced labor camp in Kielce, Poland. He worked in an
ammunition factory for 3 months. In 1944, as Soviet forces began an offensive, Leon was taken to a forced
labor camp in Czestochowa, Poland. At the end of December 1944, the Germans evacuated the camp and
took its prisoners to Buchenwald, a concentration camp near the city of Weimar, Germany. Three months
after entering Buchenwald, Leon was taken to Flossenburg, another concentration camp. He was there for
three weeks until, as the war came to a close, the Germans herded the camp’s survivors on a death march.
The death march lasted three to four days. On April 23, 1945, U.S. forces liberated the survivors near
Chan, Germany. Leon immigrated to the United States in 1949 and was drafted into the American army in
March 1952. He reached the rank of sergeant. Leon met his wife Nina in Washington, D.C.; she is also a
Holocaust survivor.2
2 http://www.ushmm.org/remembrance/survivoraffairs/meet/detail.php?content=merrick-l
Back in Winston-Salem
Once back from our study trip, on July 12th, the host-family stay started. We spent the first weekend with
our family, which consisted of (from right to left) Kim, our mother, Maureen, sister, Frank, father, me and
Bruna, the Italian BFTF fellow. It turned out that Kim has Norwegian ancestors and Frank has Italian, which
was apparently one of the reasons why they chose to host the Norwegian and Italian fellow this year. We
had an absolutely amazing time with them during the 10 days we were fortunate to have with them, and I
still perceive them as my real, American family. They made Bruna and me experience the American (and
Italian) lifestyle, we had long conversations in the evenings, drinking smoking hot, Italian coffee in the
mornings, kisses on the cheek before heading to class; truly the most incredible family of them all. We
stayed with them, as already mentioned, for ten days, while having classes every working day from 9 to 17
at Wake Forest University. The classes were led by professors, mentors and Wake Forest Staff, and
covered topics like marketing, documentary film-making, grant writing, advertising, community
building, and so on, which all were tools to help us implement our final, personal project started in the
Social Entrepreneurship class. I personally used weeks figuring out what my final project was going to look
like, and ended up with a project entitled “Young Perspective”. My main idea is to develop an interactive
world map, where all the information about conflicts, tensions, ethnical minority problems, corrupt political
systems, troubled borders, riots and demonstrations in each specific country is registered and displayed
when clicking on a country. In addition to making this an information page, I wanted to add a personal
perspective on these situations, hence the name “Young Perspective”. It is intended to be a social network,
where young citizens of the different nationalities can raise their voices by publishing pictures of the current
situation in their lives, in addition to writing personal thoughts about what’s going on in their country. I
actually got the idea during Alessandra Von Burg’s “Citizenship and Conflict” class, where I was made
aware of the tensions between the ethnical groups in the Balkans, which I initially didn’t comprehend fully.
The troubled relations between for instance Serbs and Albanians, the Macedonian name-conflict or the
bloodstained riots in Egypt, which dramatically increased during the BFTF program, made me think of a
way to visualize and comprehend such situations better. Peer-to-peer education definitely is an incredible
effective way to learn and makes the information personal and emotive.
Faculty lunches at
Throughout our stay at Wake Forest, the BFTF fellows had the possibility, in addition to the mandatory
classes, to participate in faculty lunches with different professors, PhDs and professionals within different
academic fields. I have notably listed the faculty lunches I attended, with a brief introduction to their fields of
study.
Sandra Dickson is a director, producer and screenwriter, who most recently published a documentary film
called “The Last Flight of Petr Ginz”, and earlier “Negroes with guns: Rob Williams and Black Power”.
Sandra Dickson co-directs and writes documentaries dealing with human and civil rights. Her work has had
national and international broadcasts and distribution and film festival and museum screenings. In the
evening we also got to watch a projection of “The Last Flight of Petr Ginz”, which told the most incredible
story of a boy named Petr Ginz, who lived under the Nazi occupation of Prague during WWII. By the age of
fourteen he had written six books, including a diary describing and depicting the process of the occupation,
by including his personal paintings, drawings, arts and allegories – which described the thoughts of a small
boy growing up just to be sent to Auschwitz never to be seen again.
E-mail: [email protected]
Dr. Betina Cutaia Wilkinson is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Wake Forest University. A
native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Dr. Wilkinson immigrated to the United States at a very young age. She
attained both her M.A. and her Ph.D. from Louisiana State University, where she authored her dissertation
on the role of white, blacks, and Latinos in United States politics. Her research interests include race and
ethnicity, Latino politics, immigration public opinion and political behavior.
Email: [email protected]
Michaelle Browers is an associate professor of political science at Wake Forest University in North Carolina
in the United States. She writes on various aspects of contemporary Arab and Islamic political thought.
Browers is an active member of the Women’s and Gender Studies program and the minor in Middle East
and South Asia Studies and teaches a variety of courses in political theory, including feminist political
thought, democratic theory, politics and identity, and Islamic political thought. Dr. Browers has written two
books: Democracy and Civil Society in Arab Political Thought: Transcultural Possibilities (Syracuse
University Press, 2006) and Political Ideology in the Arab World: Accommodation and Transformation
(Cambridge University Press, 2009). She coedited a book with Charles Kurzman, entitled An Islamic
Reformation? (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), and her articles have appeared in such journals as the
International Journal of Middle East Studies, the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, and the Journal
of Political Ideologies. She has conducted research throughout the Arab region.
Email: [email protected]
Helga A. Welsh is Professor of Political Science at Wake Forest University. Her publications have focused
on the history and politics of the former East Germany, German unification, transitional justice, the reform
of higher education in Germany, and democratization processes in Central and Eastern Europe. She has
published a book on denazification in the former East Germany and co-edited a book on German
unification. Her articles have appeared in journals such as Comparative Politics, European Journal of
Education, Europe-Asia Studies, German Politics, German Politics and Society, and West European
politics. She is one of the editors of “German History in Documents and Images,” a project administered by
the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC.
E-mail: [email protected]
Comparing the different uses of Spanish words across Spanish speaking countries, Jerid Francom
recently received a PhD from the University of Arizona in Linguistics and Cognitive Science. His research
interests include psycholinguistics, corpus linguistics and computational linguistics. He has published
articles on treebank and corpus design, stochastic and rule-based part-of-speech tagging, diacritic
restoration, and corpus representativeness evaluation through psycholinguistic measures.
He currently teaches both upper-division undergraduate courses for the Spanish major/minor, core courses
for the linguistics minor, and master’s courses in the Translation and Interpreting program.
Email: [email protected]
Sarah Kenyon Lischer is an associate professor in the department of Politics and International Affairs at
Wake Forest University. She is the author of Dangerous Sanctuaries: Refugee Camps, Civil War, and the
Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid (Cornell University Press, 2005). She has published widely on the topics of
humanitarian crises, human rights, military intervention, African politics, and forced migration in journals
such as International Security, Global Governance, the Harvard International Review, Civil Wars, and The
American Scholar. Lischer has been awarded fellowships and grants by, among others, the Berghof
Foundation, the Peace Research Institute of Oslo, Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and
International Affairs, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. She is writing a book on atrocity
narratives and reconciliation after genocide.
Mail:[email protected]
Norma-May Isakow is the Associate Director of the Institute for Public Engagement at Wake Forest
University (IPE). She graduated from law school in South Africa, practiced law, taught at the University of
Cape Town, and supervised student legal aid clinics. She received an LLM degree from the London School
of Economics and is admitted to the California and Colorado State Bars. She created a judicial internship
program and served as Director of Public Interest at the University of Denver College of Law.
After the faculty lunch, Norma-May wrote us a note, passed on by Alessandra:
Dear Fellows,
It was truly a pleasure to meet each and every one of you.
Even though we had just a short time together, I think that I got to know a little bit of each of you, enough to
wish that I could get to know each of you better.
You're all outstanding people with wonderful lives and careers ahead of you.
Wishing you all of the best,
Norma-May
I want to say to them all:
July 24th, the Farwell dinner, which all the fellows had feared would come, came. The fellows had for
weeks prepared performances and speeches which we were going to perform, in addition to looking
forward to seeing our host families again. This evening turned out to be the most surreal evening of the
whole stay, and I was moved numerous times by the kindness all the fellows, mentors, professors and
especially host families showed. Speeches were held and tears were shed, and I saw people grow
emotional bonds around me. I cannot believe that the time passed on so quickly!
The following two days were spent presenting our Social Entrepreneurship projects with the BFTF Fellows,
Professors at Wake Forest and the mentors as audience. I truly believe that many of the fellows have great
ideas which can change the world in each their individual way, and I do hope to see their projects
implemented in the future. I promised everyone to work towards implementing my own "Young Perspective"
project back home, and I hope to see results from the BFTF classes and preparations. Diplomas were
given to all the fellows during the afternoon of July 26th, before having a last, farewell party with all the
fellows. The next day, July 27th, we all parted, and it was heartbreaking. I want to add what I wrote to the
BFTF fellows and staff a couple of days after the return to Norway, to explain how much this experience
has meant to me:
“Dear every single one of you,
Wow, what a journey this has been! First of all I hope that you have all safely arrived back home and that
you're all surrounded by people you love. Even though that applies for me, sitting here among friends and
family back in Norway, there's still something missing, an empty space of some sort. It's like I'm still,
mentally, at the other side of the Atlantic, waiting to wake up to
see you all in the morning. Oh, if only that was the case..
I want you to know that from the very first moment I met you,
what seems just a glimpse of a second ago, you have all
amazed and inspired me in each your individual way. It's
absolutely incredible how what initially was just a list of
unknown names turned out to become the most inspiring group
of individuals I've ever met - you guys - who I now consider my worldwide family. You've all showed me
how strong, wise, bright, caring, inspiring, diligently and genuinely good an individual possibly can be -
which has helped me put things in perspective and widened
my horizons. I've found that I will never again settle with the
thought that I've done something 'adequately', because you've
shown me how to continuously strive for more, to strive for
perfection in everything you do. You have shown me what
excellence is.
So once again, thank you guys. Thank you for being you, for
sharing your personal point of view, your story. It is solely thanks to you that I've found the inspiration to
implement my project about an interactive map based upon the stories you've all got from your home
countries. I now consider it my personal calling to make your stories accessible to the world, to render your
knowledge universal. So thank you again, every single one of you, for making this month the amazing
adventure it has been!”
- Filippa Sofia Braarud, Ørje, 10.08.2013