GLA alumni donates 300 pounds of school supplies to Ghana
Global Leadership Adventures alumni Allison Hoffman was featured in the Patriot Ledger newspaper for collecting 300 pounds of school supplies to donate to the school she volunteered at in Ghana during her GLA program.
Often students ask me about donating supplies to the organizations that they volunteer at and I normally reply by saying that it’ll cost more to ship the donation than it would to simply buy the materials locally.
However, Allison was able to obtain a donation of shipping from the owner of a logistics company. I also like how she turns down the offer to send electric pencil sharpeners. She’s smart and aware enough to just collect supplies that can be used by the local community and use appropriate technology.
Kudos to you Allison for staying involved!
Sleeping under the stars in the Australian Outback
Our new 2010 catalog just came out and I’m especially excited about our program in the Australian outback. When I was in college I remember looking for programs in Australia, but was disappointed that most programs stayed on the coast – Sydney, or to the eastern side of the country (Canberra and Melbourne).
So, the new Global Leadership Adventures program is innovative because we’re flying deep into the heart of the Australian outback where we’ll volunteer in aboriginal communities and learn about their traditional culture. High school students will have the chance to learn about aboriginal spirituality, dot-painting, traditional herbal medicine and how to survive in the bush.
Since we’ll be out in the bush, we’ll be camping as we slowly make our way from Darwin, down to Alice Springs. I can’t wait for the first group to go, I hope to join them. Sleeping under the stars far from civilization sounds perfect as we head into winter here in the USA!
Alumni: The F Bomb…!
I always love it when GLA alumni go on to do things that keep them involved in the issues they’re most passionate about. So, this is a shout out to Julie Z for her new site The F Bomb.
According to the “About” page:
The FBomb.org is a blog/community created for teenage girls who care about their rights as women and want to be heard. Young feminists who are just a little bit pissed off and very outspoken are more than welcome here.
I was in India with Julie last summer and it was a great to get to know her. She is an extraordinary person and this blog is really well done and engaging. She continues to impress me by snagging an exclusive interview with the one and only Gloria Steinam!
Great job, Julie!
The Door is Open
In the past few years some friends have asked me if I have become pessimistic about the state of the world, education, and the United States. I usually keep a positive outlook on things and try take a long view of history – after all, I’ve watched the birth of the internet, a dot-com boom (and bust), the rise of globalization and emergence of biotechnology – all in my recent memory!
However, as we enter 2009, I’m especially optimistic about the coming year. I’m optimistic because beneath all the pessimistic noise in the media there continue to be exciting trends in society. Since this blog is about international education – a major reason to be optimistic is the fact that study abroad in the United States continues to increase.
The results of the annual Open Doors survey of study abroad was published in November, and the decade-long trend in the growing popularity of study abroad shows no sign of abating.
Even more exciting for me is that study abroad in “non-traditional” destinations (i.e. the places Global Leadership Adventures has programs) is also increasing. In other words, more students today are traveling to places like India, China, Brazil, South Africa, Ghana, Tanzania than ever before. This validates my thinking when I decided that GLA would focus its programming on these emerging economies. Students understand that there is a new multi-polar world order emerging and its crucial to understand these various loci of power and influence in the world if one wants to work on the global stage. And since almost all jobs today cross borders, it can be argued that every student should study abroad in order to be considered prepared to graduate.
In spite of the economic crisis (and the upcoming related geo-political crisis), I’m excited to keep watching the world become more global and be part of student’s education of this world. I still can’t believe how much innovation has come to the world in the past 15 years – and I’m sitting at the edge of my chair to see what the next 15 years brings.
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