One Handshake at a Time, Full Circle Around the Globe

Everyone who has traveled abroad has been put in the position of citizen diplomat. Whether or not we realize it, we are serving as informal ambassadors to other countries and cultures. Audrey Scott and Daniel Noll have taken this realization to heart and throughout their travels, have embraced the challenge of being active citizen diplomats wherever they go. Identifying a gap in formal diplomatic relations, this husband and wife duo sought out to bridge that gap by sharing American culture to those primarily living in developing countries.

Their experiences have been documented on their website, Uncorned Market.

Photos, blog entries detail their travels from remote areas of Tajikistan to the heart of Europe in the Czech Republic.

Also, view their photo gallery, showing the faces of citizen diplomacy.

When my husband and decided to travel around the world in December 2006, we didn't set out as citizen diplomats. Until the point of our departure, my life had featured elements of formal public diplomacy: my father was a diplomat, my mother worked for USIA, I was a Peace Corps Volunteer and I worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague, Czech Republic. But it's my 40 months on the road -- meeting people on the street, in markets, and in their homes -- where I've felt the most effective and impactful in reaching others, building bridges of communication and positively influencing their opinions of ordinary Americans.

Our recent travels have unfolded primarily in developing and transitional countries. We travel by public transport and spend a lot of time in outdoor markets and speaking to people on the street. We find that this style of travel provides us with the most favorable opportunities to engage with locals and learn about their lives. In doing so, however, we quickly realized a gap in formal diplomatic efforts. We found that large segments of the population, especially outside urban areas, have not reached by traditional public diplomacy efforts. Often, the only sources of information about America available: news programs and Hollywood movies/TV shows. In spite of all this, even in countries whose governments are at best cool towards America (e.g., Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan), we found a genuine curiosity about America and what ordinary American people are really like.

And we sought to satisfy that curiosity.

We began hearing repeatedly: "You are the first real Americans I've met," (Turkmenistan) or "I've learned something about America thanks to you," (India) or "My views about America have changed now that I've met you." (Tajikistan)

In this way, the broad conceit implied by "citizen diplomacy" and sharing one's country one handshake at a time really does ring true.

While we've shared ourselves and our country on the road, we also use our website - http://UncorneredMarket.com - to bring the countries we've visited and the people we've met - back home. Our goal: to help others' -- particularly American schoolchildren -- associate a human face with places they might otherwise disregard as far away, a place on a map, a disconnected flash across the evening news. More recently, we've given presentations in our home towns and in schools, in hopes that we might share and make some of these connections through photo slideshows and short video clips. The focus of our presentations: humanity and the people we've met on the road who have treated us with kindness, particularly when they've had so little material to give.

The positive response from young Americans -- even if few -- now wanting to engage more with the world motivates us to continue with our journey, bringing our story -- the story of ordinary Americans - to the world, and to bring the story of the world back home.

This two-way storytelling is what we believe citizen diplomacy is all about.

~Audrey Scott

Posted Wednesday, July 14, 2010