1.1 Background

Amidst increasing global and local diversity, possessing the skills and expertise to communicate effectively, appropriately, and satisfactorily across cultures has now become an imperative. Improving our expertise, experience, and skills in the area of intercultural communication not only benefits our everyday lives but also enhances our working environment and our career development.

In order to address this need, we've created the online course "Intercultural Communication", along with this trainer's manual. The main goal of the course is to identify and analyse challenges in intercultural contexts, while developing competencies that can lead to better performance and job satisfaction. Overall, the course aims to enhance participants' intercultural skills so that they can work confidently and appropriately in a wide range of diverse environments and situations.

The trainer's manual is designed to enable instructors to support participants in the online course. It introduces principles for teaching and learning in diverse settings and provides training materials for customisation based on participants’ needs and backgrounds.

The material included can be used

• to deepen participants’ knowledge of selected topics,
• to provide learning activities that can be employed,
• to specifically target participants working for non-governmental organisations (NGOs), small and medium sized companies (SMEs) and students who are embarking on a course in intercultural communication.

Our goal is thus to help trainers support participants in their learning, while enhancing participants’ personal growth.