The countries of the world are divided by borders. Giant, fictional lines that tell you which country you’re in. For some people, the thought of crossing a border and visiting other cultures can be scary. Merve Karaman tells us that though it might be frightening, we have a lot more reasons to move forward and to break down those borders. Learning about other cultures and finding the similarities between them improves our cultural intelligence and can bring us all closer together. That’s why she started her Connecting Cities program. By giving our youth the chance to spend time in different cultures, to become aware of other worldviews, it will be much easier to break down the borders that exist in our hearts as well. At the end of her talk, Merve gives her audience a chocolate-based exercise. The audience is urged to break their chocolate into two pieces. One to keep for themselves, the other to give to somebody they don’t know and have been afraid to talk to. This way, a first step can be made to break down the intercultural borders, one step at a time. There are still many people in the world who have never tasted chocolate. Try this excercise for yourself, and we can change that, one piece of candy at a time.