International Week: Workshops That Boost Students’ Intercultural Competence

Vol.28, Issue 10, 22th November 2025 

International Week in Kouvola offered students a valuable chance to step outside their routines and explore what it really means to work across cultures. Through a series of hands-on workshops, they discovered how communication, fairness, and cultural awareness shape professional life just as much as technical skills do.

The week opened with a workshop led by Professor Friederike Gerstenberg, who explored the idea of organizational justice and why it matters so deeply in social work. Using real-life scenarios, she showed how unfair treatment , inconsistent decisions, lack of transparency, or disrespect, can directly affect a social worker’s motivation, wellbeing, and the quality of care they provide. Students learned about the three forms of justice (procedural, interactional, and distributive) and discussed what “fair leadership” looks like in practice: explaining decisions clearly, listening before deciding, applying rules consistently, and modelling respectful behaviour. It was a strong reminder that justice inside an organization is not just a leadership goal, it directly shapes the help clients receive.

Mid-week, students joined an intercultural communication workshop with Len Van Renterghem and Eveline Vande Wiele. Through practical examples and small group activities, they examined how simple gestures, eye contact, a handshake, the way you hand over a business card, can have very different meanings depending on the country. They compared professional habits in places like India, where physical contact is avoided and small gifts are appreciated, and the United States, where small talk is expected but business comes first. This session encouraged students to step into other people’s shoes and understand how to behave respectfully in unfamiliar cultural settings.

The week concluded with Harri Tuomola’s “Cultures in Encounters” workshop. Drawing on his experience working abroad, he highlighted how work cultures differ, how misunderstandings arise, and what helps build trust when people do not share the same background. His stories and observations made the theory of intercultural communication feel very real and accessible.

Overall, International Week offered much more than lectures: it encouraged curiosity, empathy, and open-mindedness, qualities essential for anyone preparing to work in an increasingly globalised world.