Everyone who has lived abroad knows that adding diversity enriches our professional and personal experience. Similarly, interacting with and in different age groups is rewarding, and yet we tend to overlook age as a meaningful diversity metric. Mobile researchers are in general distant from older family members (e.g. parents, grandparents). At the same time they usually establish social networks at work, where the opportunity to connect to people in the retirement age is missing. Retired citizens also cannot connect to younger people through their employment contacts. Yet both, mobile researchers and retired citizens benefit from interaction across age and cultural groups.
The project MünsterXchange aims to establish an intergenerational and intercultural network by providing international early-stage researchers and life-experienced citizens of Münster with opportunities to meet, interact, exchange, and connect.
The project has three components: a buddy scheme that invites couples to meet on their own initiative and spend time together, participation in networking events, and a workshop on "age-diversity". MünsterXchange participants can choose to participate in selected components.
The project has minimal guidelines and welcomes ideas from the participants.