Global Village

The core of the Global Village event is a showcase of culture, country presentations, national dances, national foods, credos - in short everything that makes one country. More than 80 countries are going to present their selves to organizations, companies, students and all other people present on a Nikola Pasic Square in the downtown of Belgrade. Ours and foreign cultural artistic organizations are going to perform national dances and songs presenting the best of their cultures to everybody, making this event an extravagant display of cultural and national tolerance and cooperation. It is supposed to start a spark of tolerance in everybody present and many more that will have a chance to see it over the television and other media. In short - we will try to make as much people as possible to realize that we are all the same inside event if we look, act or believe in different things.

Among other, special guests who are expected on Global Village are the Minister of Faiths, Minister of National minorities and the Major of Belgrade. All of them are going to deliver speeches stressing on the importance of this and similar events in the future of all nations and countries. These are just some of the people who recognize this event as an example of intercultural and interethnic tolerance and development of the strong civic society, which is willing to take its future into its own hands and act rather than just talk.

We, AIESEC, as an organization, refuse to accept that the World is supposed to be in the state that we perpetually find ourselves in, or return to over and over again. We consider the contemporary state of the world rather as a great opportunity to develop a better future than as an unsolvable mystery. With a small dose of intercultural and international cooperation we can all together start to see our problems as challenges and opportunities for advancement, and the Global Village is a place where we can all start to act in this direction. It is an event on which we can learn to respect the cultures and credos of others and value, as well as nourish, our own traditions and beliefs which have been forgotten by many of us. We believe that it is rather easy not to appreciate the peoples and nations that one has never seen or met or even had a chance to understand. On the other hand, we find it impossible not to respect and appreciate the people who came and opened their hearts to ours and shared with us the best of their culture and beliefs. For this specific purpose the Global Village is organized in such a public place trying to influence as many people as possible, as well as sending a sort of a "wake up call" to everybody to start treating each other with love and tolerance.

Furthermore, for this event AIESEC will try to provide as big media presence as possible trying to reach even those people who have decided or are not in the position to join us on this glorious day for Belgrade, our country and as all other countries present. We expect to have roughly around 30,000 visitors on the Nikola Pašic square, forming in that way the largest group of people that has ever gathered in our country in order to celebrate tolerance, advancement of the civic society, and international cultural understanding.

We consider that such events are very scarce or even inexistent in our region, as well as many other for that matter, and there is no greater pity than that. Therefore, we have decided to bring people and cultures of the world together in this great event under two maxims: firstly, because we believe that you "must get to know the peoples of the world in order to love and respect them" and secondly because we stand convinced that "we must be the change we want to see in the future."