I am not sure if at this time of my day I can write something coherent in response to all inspiring and enriching things that I read above, but at least I’ll do my best to put down some bits and pieces of my brain’s production.
Above all, thank to Lene for the “thought motivators” articles and Andreas for his overall work in this space.

On the article:

“Therefore specific training approaches need to be developed for each situation instead of just using the same simulation exercise in all cases.”

Totally agree. I would also put it like this “using the same simulation exercise over over, whether you deal with ICL within a short term international activity or with developing respect and understanding within multicultural societies, will not be of any value if we don’t somehow incorporate in its execution/evolution, elements related to the particular group, the dynamic, the environment, the level and so on, that will set the exercise as relevant, context-sensitive and effective for the specific situation”. Which in other words is “keep the basis – once you are experienced in it – and build up the experience synthesizing the nearby reality”. Concluding; the facilitator has the major role in this process. But unfortunately, even the 231 youth trainers (as searched on SALTO 27/2/07) that can implement intercultural learning as an educational approach within international youth activities, are not enough (as a number…it’s not the time to write on sufficiency of competences) to respond (and when responding, to respond efficiently) to the hundreds of “developing respect to diversity” activities taking place every year in European level.

“Just being aware of cultural differences is not good enough, but the participants need specific competences to deal with the different situations.”

Can’t agree more. “Being aware” is at least one step ahead of “having heard” or “my friend/the TV said”…Awareness takes at least some moments of personal involvement and it also makes use of the mind; at least a bit more than just simulating the auditory nerve, to put it this way. So, Lene said it nicely “not good enough”…Which is good but not enough…It has not been scientifically researched, but what I am personally feeling when interacting with some hundreds of young people that I have “sent abroad” (sounds simplistic, but it can be used as a common criterion) is that, in general, every next encounter among them and “people, on average, culturally different” is not the same as the previous one; I dare to say that, at least, they are more curious; and these cases are maybe of the very few that the cat is not killed…

And something about superficiality; it sounds like a qualitative term to me.
There can be a groups’ contact for some months/years and still ranked as superficial. Just because the “ground is not fertile” (as in the majority/minority case shortly described above in Lene’s article).
Some “culturally different” people might spend a couple of hours reflecting in common on the ICL activities of the day and discussing about life and everything and their intercultural sensitivity to grow in disproportion to the time spent. For me it is again a matter of the “facilitators”; but this time I use the term more widely; it can be the trainers, the environment, the overall stimuli sprung from the educational activity, the program itself, the people around and so on…The major figure/s (the person/s’ actions that will reduce superficiality)is the one/ones who – to put it in general – have perfectly described ICL in their application for funding and the ones that are entitled to implement what has been described.
It’s also interesting to say that for instance, in a youth exchange, ideally 1) there is equality in status, 2) common goals set, 3) no competition among groups 4) an authority has sanctioned the contact (but this one don’t know how important is, maybe because I can not understand it sufficiently). There you go…

It took more than I expected so I can only hope that it is easy to be read.
Thank you again for the space and time.

Sakis

The inter-group contact theory was described by Gordon Allport in 1954 in his book “The Nature of Prejudice”.

According to Allport, intergroup contact would lead to reduced intergroup prejudice if the contact situation embodies four conditions: 1) equal status between the groups in the situation; 2) common goals; 3) no competition between the groups; and 4) authority sanction for the contact. (Source)

Also, Pettigrew and Tropp have conducted substantial research in the area and claim in a recent paper that “considerable research has shown that greater intergroup contact corresponds with lower intergroup prejudice.”

Source: Pettigrew & Tropp (2005).