A game to understand the preferences of specific opinions/values of individuals and within communities.
It is way to practice intercultural competences, brake down stereotypes and to give everyone a better access to the learning process.
Using values cards is an easy way to quickly find out what important to your trainees and why. Values cards can be used to elicit, clarify, discuss and evoke thought about values and their meaning for each individual.

This experience may enhance the trainees:

·   Communication skills
·   Cooperation
·   Responsibility
·   Flexibility
·   Collaboration
·   Intercultural self-awareness
·  Cross-cultural competence
·  Socio-cultural competence

The aim is to provide trainers with an intercultural approach so that trainees work together to maximize their own and each other's learning. It aims at developing intercultural skills and cultural sensitivity and facilitate integration.

The ideal number can vary from 15 to 25 trainees. The trainees are divided in smaller groups of 5 to discuss specific questions or implement specific tasks, or it can be also completed individually.

Duration: 60-120 minutes.

Moderation cards, paper and markers.

1.  Time to search
In advance, cards are prepared (each card with one value). They should contain values, which are deeply rooted beliefs about what is good and what is bad. Further, they should also contain values and characteristics, which cannot be necessarily linked to communities and can be considered as more individual, i.e. ambitious career aspirations. After explaining the exercise to the participants, randomly hand out 8 cards to each participants. They are now asked to Ask participants to “upgrade” their set of cards by trading with others. The upgrade reflects their preferences of values and characteristics. In the end, nobody should end up with less than 2 cards.

2.  Time to exchange
In the next step, ask participants to compare their set with others and to get together in groups holding similar value-card sets. They should discuss what it is they have in common. If you like, you could also ask them to focus on where these values came from and why they hold similar values. Then ask them to find somebody that holds values that are very different than theirs. These pairs should try to formulate values they can both agree on, on the basis of what they have on their cards. Although participants might be tempted to simply find compromises by finding more and more abstract or very broad and almost meaningless statements, motivate them to stay as concrete as possible.

3.  Time to discuss in group
Finish the exercise when you feel that most of the pairs have come up with two or three compromise statements. With the whole group, hold an evaluation meeting. The discussion in large group could be done by asking the following questions:

• How did participants feel about the exercise?
• Was it easy to trade values?
• What made it easy/difficult?
• Did they find out something about their own values – and where they come from?
• What are some common values everybody can agree on?

• Tips for trainers
• This method has been used in different group settings. It has proven to be particularly powerful in groups that had not been strongly confronted with intercultural learning before and worked as a good starting point for a reflection on values. The formulation of the values on the cards is very important – some of the values we used proved too broad (everybody could agree on them), some too specific. The best thing is to discuss in your team about the values and see if you can find a good variety of opinions on the values for the cards.

Depending on target group you can vary the objectives: use values cards to identify values, to inspire action, to resolve conflicts,etc. …

• Exercise 1
• Value card game - watch the demonstration about the Values Cards here.
• Exercise 2
• To be updated later.