It’s funny, I often got told throughout high school that it was important to have diversity in teams to improve efficiency, but I never knew why. Doing my undergraduate in New York, and now living with two Chinese and the other three American Ulster scholars in Belfast, I learned fast.
Each of us have individual knowledge, experience and culture which no one can take away from us, and that no one else would have that’s the same. If we are lucky enough to be in a place of diversity, it is a skill and a necessity to open our eyes to listen and learn from people who have differences to ourselves.
A lot of our work in Belfast is in certain areas of communities, certain parts of town which are labelled, segmented and often seperated because of their differences. To an outsider, it all may look the same, as the vast majority of people talk, look and act very similar, then to be exposed to us Victory Scholars and learn from our diversity is what I love to experience. I feel honoured to now have knowledge of all the different nationalities of poeple I have met over the years and I’ll always carry that with me moving forward.
This is why I think the Victory Scholar programme to be so influencial. It allows people, young and old, who may have not travelled to see people from different places. It opens their eyes to differences, allows them to think and learn which is truly a great thing to experience.
