Mikele Grønhøj Schultz-Knudsen

My name is Mikele
I am 22 years old,
I study law
And I live in Denmark

To have a dialogue is not the same as debating. You can’t win a dialogue. You can’t loose it.

In a debate, you try to convince the other that you are right and he is wrong. In a dialogue the participants try to understand each others viewpoints.

After a dialogue you might still think that your position is most correct, but now you understand why the other person thinks otherwise. Of course the two of you might also end up agreeing. But this doesn’t mean that one of you has lost. Instead both of you have won, because you have been open-minded and looked for the truth.

Some people dislike people from other cultures. But we dislike each other because of our prejudices. We think we know what the others believe in, and what their arguments are for believing this.

When we meet and have a dialogue, we realise that we agree a lot more than we thought. We realise, that what we thought we knew about the other wasn’t true – or that his reasons for being like he is, is more understandable than we thought.

Dialogue has changed me a lot. I have gotten new insights and I now understand viewpoints that I didn’t understand before. Sometimes these new understandings have also challenged my own viewpoints, and either changed them, or given me a better understanding of what I believe in.

This is why I am still active in the project. Because I hope, that I can help to remove misunderstandings and help spread a better understanding of our differences.

I joined this project, because I believe that dialogue is the strongest weapon we have. Dialogue removes prejudices, misunderstandings and intolerance.

- Mikele Grønhøj Schultz-Knudsen