BEYOND THE COMFORT ZONE

Beyond the comfort zone

Participation in GlobCom involves not only working in unfamiliar cultural contexts, but often with clients who pose communication challenges that the average Gen Y undergraduate student would be largely unaware of.

Over the past years, the project has focused on developing a nation branding strategy for Lithuania (2020), and promoting Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (2009) and the City of Stellenbosch in South Africa (2013).

Other real life clients have included the multinational chemicals company INEOS (2018), Airbus (2010) and the international high-tech manufacturer, Zeiss, as client and sponsor for the conferences in Barcelona (2011), Boston (2014) and Bangalore (2017), moving their campaign focus from high tech manufacturer to providing eye care in third world countries, and eventually to a focus on rural India.

Curtin’s 2015 Symposium was hosted in collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund, who set students the challenge to preserve the Borneo rainforest (see http://news.curtin.edu.au/stories/globcom-2015-competing-ideas-to-preserve-the-borneo-rainforest/), followed by the UAE-based, global Dugong & Seagrass Conservation Project. Despite the wide variety of clients and campaign objectives, all communication briefs have had one thing in common: they put students outside their comfort zone by focusing on more than traditional learning outcomes. However, in turn GlobCom provides them with incredible opportunities to demonstrate their critical thinking skills, creativity and ultimately stand out from their peers

Curtin Bentley delegates in Abu Dhabi in 2016, with lecturer Veronica Lawrance

"While there were challenges along the way, the benefits and experiences in overcoming those challenges far out-weighted the difficulties and was what [sic] made this experience so valuable and enjoyable"

2014 survey respondent

Past real life clients include:

The Republic of Lithuania
Wellness World USA
INEOS, unconventional energy resources,
Zeiss Vision Care & Carl Zeiss AG
Dugong & Seagrass Conservation Project
WWF Malaysia (2015 case study)
The City of Stellenbosch, South Africa
AGEDI: "Keeping an Eye on Earth" Summit
Airbus
Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation

“Working across cultures can be very hard or it can be very easy. It depends on your mindset.”

2013 survey respondent

"Bangalore was an interesting city, described by one of the professors and full of life, enthusiasm and traffic. ...Whilst it was a culture shock it was an important exercise to build character and tolerance of cultural differences.

The people were absolutely beautiful, both the hosts and our team-mates and through some extremely stressful situations we managed to pull together as a collective group."

2017 participant (email)

"GlobCom contributed to my professional growth. With this project I could finally transfer my skills from a theoretical to a practical field. Working with people from different parts of the world meant a great challenge for me, as I learned how to approach people who belong to different cultures and who have a different way of reasoning. At the beginning it seemed quite strange, but as the project went on you learn how to work efficiently with the others"

2014 survey respondent