Why are cultural exchanges important?

If you google the sentence above, you get endless hits from hundreds of organizations that assert that peace and understanding are the result of cultural exchanges.  In the world that we live in today, it is difficult to live with an isolated view of the world.  In Canada, we embrace multiculturalism and in Halton we expect our learners, when they graduate, to be global thinkers.  Our partipants are well on their way!

To quote Gandhi, "I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed.  I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible.  But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any."