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: wilkinbc@wfu.edu

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: browerm@wfu.edu

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: welsh@wfu.edu

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: francojc@wfu.edu

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: lischesk@wfu.edu

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:isaknm@wfu.edu

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