"Importance of diversity and different cultures"; a blog post by fundraising Warwick graduate cycling the world

A Warwick Economics graduate is well into a year-long charity cycling journey from Indonesia to London. Hitesh Pankhania, who studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) is currently cycling with his cousin Vivek Jada to raise money for charity.

Following on from his previous blog post about applying bargaining theory to a real life situation, Hitesh has been in touch to discuss what he has learnt during his fundraising endeavour about diversity and the importance of different cultures.

If you would like to support Hitesh on his challenge and help raise money for the childrens cancer charity CLIC Sargent, you can do so at justgiving.com/theworldonwheels.

Although I've been cycling for many months now, I find it difficult to answer the question of what I've learnt about the cultures that I've been travelling through. Diversity is important, we all know that, and you'll hear plenty of employers say the same thing.

What was a difficult question for me was trying to understand what makes diversity important? Why is exploring/understanding other cultures a valuable exercise?

From the time I've spent travelling so far, I think looking at different cultures is important because their experiences can help provide answers to problems that we are facing, whether big or small, and provide a new way of thinking, working or living.

For example, a common sight when we were cycling around South East Asia was seeing young children playing under the watchful eye of their grandparents. In a lot of the places, grandparents take care of and raise their grandchildren through the day, while the parents are out working. This, seemingly small, change has a profound impact on the family structure and how society functions.

Looking back at our own society, a serious problem for families and young parents is undoubtedly childcare costs. The current solutions seem to be elaborate childcare voucher schemes, but could another, potentially simpler, solution lay in looking at how some Asian societies manage childcare?

While this is by no means a scientific or academic look at things, my point is only to show how we can learn from other cultures."