Believing in the need of building the students to be future global players, the Faculty of Business and Management (FBM), Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Puncak Alam Campus, Selangor, Malaysia encourage their students to actively participate in activities that could enhance their international experience and develop cross-cultural competencies. Recently five of its students, Alyafatini bt Abdul Razak, Nur Liyana Binti Kamalrol Hadi, Nurmas Intan Camellia binti Mohd Rohan, Nurul Adlina Binti Mohammad Fadzir and Siti Zulaika binti Rusmadzi had successfully participated in the Online Global Cultural Exchange (OGCE) 2022 program hosted by the Universitas Islam Sultan Agung (UNISSULA), Indonesia. The program was held from October 24th – 28th October 2022 and attended by 71 participants from across Asia countries.
The main objective of this program is to foster cross-cultural understanding and collaboration among students from different countries. Participants in this program were encouraged to think about issues with regards to culture and offer solutions. Through this program, it broadens the students’ perspectives on the many cultural practices in other nations and demonstrates how they could engage with people from other cultures. The FBM students spoke highly of this program. Among the remarks were that they cherished the chance to converse openly in English with students from other countries (Nur Liyana, 2022), appreciated the opportunity to learn more about the other cultures, and enjoyed the Indonesian language classes (Siti Zulaika, 2022). Nur Liyana Kamarul Hadi even managed to obtain a second place for her paper in one of the program’s sessions.
Generally, with better cultural understanding it could lessen disputes and disagreements among people and nations. Hence, forge more future collaboration that could benefit everyone and strengthen the ties among the Asia countries. Thus, as the nation’s future citizens, such program is unquestionably beneficial in developing the youths’ competencies in facing global challenges.