About the Culture Capsule Project

Culture capsule is a flagship project of the ASEF University Alumni Network (ASEFUAN) that involves cultural exchanges between students aged 9-17, from elementary and secondary schools in Asia and Europe. The initiative promotes friendship and better understanding among students by giving them the opportunity to trade local items, cultural symbols, letters and photographic records to their counterparts in the other country. The Culture Capsule initiative hopes to encourage students to gain a broader perspective by seeing other parts of the world through the eyes of a fellow student. Concrete and fun exchanges enable students to compare lifestyles, debunk existing stereotypes and misconceptions and, most importantly, gain appreciation and respect toward different cultures.

Since the establishment of ASEFUAN, three Culture Capsules have been organized by ASEFUAN members and partner schools: between Austria and the Philippines; France and Korea; and Germany and Indonesia. To learn more about former Culture Capsules, go to the Exchanges part of the website.

Although former Culture Capsules were cross regional, cultural differences between ASEAN+3 States and EU countries in addition to opportunities offered by ASEFUAN’s geographic pervasiveness, lead us to promote the creation of intra regional Cultural Capsules as well. Why not a Spain-Poland Culture Capsule, or one between Japan and Indonesia?

The name of our project stems from the means through which it is carried out. Letters, objects and pictures representative of students’ daily life will be put in a parcel, the “culture capsule”, and sent abroad to the partner class. Imagine students “ooohing” and “aaahing” as items are brought out of this “culture capsule” coming from a distant country!