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.

Read the full article here.

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!

We were excited to see that Global Leadership Adventures was mentioned in this New York Times article.

As the article mentioned, many students are fundraising to pay the tuition or working extra jobs. We have seen an increase in the number of students who have been able to do fundraising to pay their entire program fee. In addition, we have increased the amount of financial aid that we award. We have given out a record amount of financial aid this year!

We hope that this economic recession will herald in a new era of students working to raise money for their tuition and an increase in the number of organizations who follow our lead in expanding scholarship and financial aid opportunities.

Although the economy may be tanking, there’s never been a more crucial time in history to be a global citizen.

I co-founded Global Leadership Adventures in 2004 to help address what I saw as a pressing need for the world: a need for a new generation of leaders that is able to tackle the challenges of the increasingly inter-connected world we live in.

The greatest challenges over the next few decades are problems that can only be solved through global cooperation. Think about it: climate change, the energy crisis, poverty, HIV/AIDS, and terrorism are challenges that cannot be solved without engaging actors from various corners of the world in the solution. I realized that there was an urgent need to develop a new breed of leader that has deep personal connections to peers across the world, and that has had first-hand experience of global issues such as poverty, climate change, HIV/AIDs.

This is what inspired me to launch GLA – a vehicle for developing these leaders who will lead the world into the 21^st century.

– Fred Swaniker

“How do you know if your programs are successful?” A question often directed to me.

Previously, I’ve written about the unexpected outcomes of study abroad programs. Along the same lines, I would say that I would consider our programs a success if our alumni become “activated”. Whether our programs spark a student to learn a new language, pursue a new course of study, start a non-profit, fall in love with a country, or take up a cause. If we can facilitate a spark, an activating event, I think we’ve done well.

A spark in the teenage years can be especially powerful because high school students are still open to the possibilities that life holds before them. Whereas, my work with college students often found that they already knew (or thought they knew) what they were going to do in life and were simply looking for a way to reinforce what they already wanted to do.

One of the reasons I enjoy working with high school students is that they have not necessarily decided on which college to apply to, what to major in, or even thought about their own self-identity.

Educators often ask me, “What outcomes do you expect to achieve through your programs at Global Leadership Adventures?”

In today’s educational world, everyone has been trained to focus on outcomes and build curricula to ensure that student can achieve them.

However, with independent experiential learning programs such as GLA, we have the luxury of being able to focus on a wider set of outcomes, including intangible concepts such as self-discovery and personal growth.Since we don’t depend on government funding, we’re not tied to achievement tests and programs such as No Child Left Behind.

I usually reply with some factual information about how we want students to get a deeper understanding of social issues, human rights and personal leadership.But quickly I transition to a more unorthodox answer – “I don’t know”.

International educational programs are one of the best ways to literally lift a person out of one social context and drop them into a completely different one.This exposes the individual to massive amounts of potential learning opportunities and potential networking opportunities.In fact, the potential for a student to connect with a person, place or idea is so great, that almost every person I know who works on an international level can point to a specific moment in their personal history as an “activating event” that set them on a new life course towards a career in international affairs.

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