GlobalCitizenCorps

Jordan: Amman - GCC Leaders Clean Up the Neighborhood

2011-06-21T11:54:00.000-07:00

Jordan: Amman - GCC Leaders Clean Up the Neighborhood

Combatting fear in clothes that fit.

2010-09-12T10:14:00.000-07:00

“What should I wear if I do not have a long, loose dress? haha… that may sound trivial but I want to be respectful. Do you get my question?”

Now I generally do not wear dresses, but I did get her question. Molly, a 17 year old student and leader in Mercy Corps’ Global Citizen Corps, is getting ready tolead more than a dozen other students from her high school to a

Global Citizen Corps leader Molly Mus at Mosque

press conference and tour of a mosque in Seattle Washington today.
It’s September 11^th, a day of remembrance, and one in which Molly and her group want to recognize as a day to build bridges to
understanding as an antidote to fear and distrust.

I understand her question all too well because earlier this month I faced a similar dilemma.

I had been invited by Charlene Teters, a high school classmate, to come to her annual Pow Wow for her tribe, the Spokane Indians. I had connected with her at our 40^th year class reunion last month. We didn’t know each other well in high school, but I did remember her brother George quite well. He was the guy who beat me with uncompromising regularity in competitive wrestling throughout high school!

At the reunion, I learned that over the years Charlene had become a nationally prominent activist, leading to major policy changes so that today most professional and university sports teams no longer use Indians as mascots for their teams.

As I got ready that morning to pack and go to the Pow Wow I realized I had nothing to wear that would work.
I pulled out my one clean white t-shirt, with a Seattle Mariners emblem on the back (that seemed ok) but the logo on the front was of Alaska Airlines, with a Native face. I grabbed another t-shirt I had gotten at the Grand Canyon some years ago, and then noticed the image of Kokopelli, a fertility deity worshiped by some Native American tribes in the Southwest. Not ok?

Charlene leading granddaughter in her first Pow Wow dance

I grew up in Spokane, a western town of sorts, so decided to grab my leather belt and leather hat I had gotten in Peru a few years back. Both hand-made. And both etched with what some believe to be religious animal symbols, called the
Nazca Lines, from the ancient time of the Incas. Another commercial exploitation of Native culture?

My last option was to go a little fancier, and pull out my best western-looking shirt, a black, decorative Cowboy shirt. Eek! Now that would be a real poke in the eye.

We really know so little about each other. Maybe none of this would be offensive, I really don’t know. And I didn’t fully know what to expect at the Pow Wow, or, for that matter, what we will see and learn when we go to the mosque today. I have traveled to 26 countries so far in my life, a good number of them in the middle east, and in all that time, I don’t think I have ever stepped foot in a mosque.

Today is a day to take another step toward understanding. It’s a good day to live.

"Making Globalization a More Human Experience"

2010-06-25T09:35:00.000-07:00

This is a guest post by Sarah Standish, a Global Citizen Corps staff member.

Hundreds of volunteers sustain the work of the NGO Global Voices Online, and have done so for years. Why do people from all over the world devote so much time to the organization? Is there some secret to making it work? At the most recent Global Voices Summit, I tried to find out.

The Role of Citizen Media in Development Work

2010-05-28T11:28:00.000-07:00

This is a guest post by Sarah Standish, a Global Citizen Corps staff member.

Let’s face it—citizen media projects quite often focus on one of a few common goals, like giving voice to a marginalized people, or freedom of speech, or promoting government transparency. These are all extremely valuable goals, but they’re more concerned with politics than development. Does that mean social media has nothing to offer to development issues, like the ones that Global Citizen Corps leaders work on?

Of course not! Citizen media can also be very beneficial to development projects, and some of the projects highlighted at the 2010 Global Voices Citizen Media Summit proved that in a number of fields.

Environment: The Nomad Green project in Mongolia trains citizens to use social media to report on environmental issues using blogs, mapping, videos, and podcasts. Nomad Green now has dozen of authors writing about environmental issues in the country, and a map where citizens can report environmental problems. They also translate many of their articles into English, Chinese, and other languages—because environmental problems don’t stay within one country’s borders. As the Nomad Green website notes, “There are almost no similarities between Taiwan the small island country in Pacific ocean and Mongolia the second biggest inland country. However, the dust storm that originates from the ever expanding desert in Mongolia affects millions of Taiwanese during winter.” That’s just one reason sharing information and techniques between different communities of environmental activists is important.

Health: In the Congo, the organization AIDS Rights Congo uses social media like videos and blogs to document the stories of people affected by AIDS in Congo, and then employs these materials as part of an effort to educate others about the disease and advocate for their rights.

Environment: In Madagascar, citizen journalists also contributed to raising awareness of illegal logging in their national forests by blogging about it.

Education & Conflict: In Medellin, Colombia, activists combined blogging workshops for youth with a public outreach program at their local libraries. The result was a project called HiperBarrio, which combines library time with a program that allows participants—many of whom come from poor neighborhoods rife with violence—to blog about their lives.

Conflict, Education, & Environment: The NGO Bosco Uganda believes that the Internet can provide a way to help communities recover from conflict. This project provides Internally Displaced Person camps in Northern Uganda with internet connections and training, using technology especially suited to such rural communities: solar-powered computers connected to long-range wireless networks. According to the organization’s website, “User groups are trained to produce photo essays and to use Picasa and Flickr to store their pictures. Sharing their story with the world has been a form of therapy in itself helping users recover from the trauma of war.” Bosco Uganda also carries out classroom-to-classroom partnerships with schools in the United States to help students in both countries learn about gathering data and mapping water resources.

Citizen media projects are often designed to collect and aggregate information about a particular issue or make information more accessible. But how do you turn that information into action? Check out the fantastic Ten Tactics For Turning Information Into Action website for more ideas!

Photo: The Mongolian landscape. By tiarescott (flickr)

2010-05-28T11:23:00.000-07:00

This is a guest post by Sarah Standish, a Global Citizen Corps staff member.

One of the many interesting discussions at the 2010 Global Voices Citizen Media Summit was a discussion about the relationship between youth and media that raised some provocative questions.

Is digital communication bad for youth? Anne, a professor at Columbia University, worried that spending so much time online was making it harder for youth to develop other skills, and that it was exposing youth to ideas they were too young for. Others focused on online bullying, saying that the issue wasn’t getting enough attention outside of the United States. Some participants, however, believed that none of these problems were worse on the Internet than they had been before it, and one even argued that the Internet provided a new way for students who were being bullied to fight back.

Do youth really want their voices to be heard? While the discussion moderator, Emily, believed that the most important function of youth organizations was to give youth a way to make their voices heard, Juliana, the Global Voices video editor, disagreed. She explained that while she believes youth have distinct voices, she questions the assumption that youth want the world to hear these voices. She thinks instead that youth often prefer to communicate with each other in ways that are not meant for adults to see—whether by passing notes in class or writing to each other on Facebook.

Nishant, an Internet researcher from India, believed that youth do want to make their voices heard, but not necessarily on the topics that adults want them to talk about. He cited the example of the Back Dorm Boys, a Chinese duo whose performances consist solely of lipsyncing to songs originally performed by the Backstreet Boys. Most people may think of this as a silly activity, but the Back Dorm Boys became very popular on YouTube. When Nishant interviewed the duo, they told him that they saw their work as a profound rebellion against dominant Chinese culture, but that they were rarely given the chance to express that idea. From this experience, Nishant concluded that what youth want to talk about is actually incredibly important, and that adults should give them a wider space to do so.

Victor, a Malawian journalist and Global Voices author, agreed with Nishant on this point—that youth do want unedited platforms to express themselves. However, he pointed out that there may not be one platform that appeals to all kinds of youth and noted that in his past experience working in youth media, some youth seem very interested in Facebook and others very enthusiastic about radio, but few were equally interested in both.

Is a short attention span a bad thing? One participant from Egypt expressed frustration at the fact that youth generally stop participating in her online feminism project after just a short while. Others, however, said that this was simply the nature of youth participation and not necessarily a bad thing.

How do youth participate in politics? Emily wanted to find ways to involve youth in mainstream political debates, nothing that she saw as particularly important since youth don’t have full legal rights. Nishant, on the other hand, believed that today’s youth have already have a different way of being political than other generations did—so different, in fact, that contemporary adults might not recognize it as political most. In fact, he believes that youth’s use of new media tools, like Facebook and YouTube, often has a political dimension that adults just don’t see.

The discussion ended with many questions raised, and few answers. How would you respond to questions like these?

Photo: stampcny (flickr)

When an Internet Connection is Just the Beginning

2010-05-20T12:50:00.000-07:00

The Global Voices team in Santiago

This is a guest post by Sarah Standish, a Global Citizen Corps staff member.

A stranger called out my name in the lobby of our hotel in Santiago. Waving me over, she introduced herself.

“How did you know who I was?” I asked.

“You look exactly like your Twitter picture,” she told me.

This wasn’t the only time such a scene was repeated during the Global Voices 2010 Citizen Media Summit in Chile. The Summit was a time to put screen names, Twitter handles, blogging pseudonyms, and email addresses with faces—to meet people I’d only ever communicated with online, as well as to see faces unknown to me from the Internet or anywhere else.

As interesting and fun as these interactions were, they also presented a question: if you’ve already met someone online, how important is it to also meet them in person? The internet, after all, allows us to access the news, thoughts, and feelings of people all over the world—to be global citizens while staying close to home. So should we meet these far-away strangers? Let’s not forget that if you come from two places that are very far away, traveling to meet comes with a significant cost in time, money, and environmental impact. If you have the option of dealing with people entirely over the internet, is it worthwhile to meet?

For Global Voices co-founder Ethan Zuckerman, the answer is a resounding yes—meeting in person is crucial. When I asked him what made Global Voices so successful, he immediately said, “Beer!” Elaborating, he explained that one of the keys to making a virtual organization work was meeting in person and having drinks. (Younger readers and non-drinkers: you could make the same connections over coffee, tea, fruit juice…you name it!). People who work together can get more done face-to-face, and build personal connections that help their work.

Environmental reservations aside, I’d have to agree. Online communication is usually broad and unlikely to be deep in the way that face-to-face conversations can be. (Just because it can be deep—I know people who’ve fallen in love entirely online—doesn’t mean it usually is.) A few minutes in person can also tell you about the depths of someone’s personality in ways that don’t come across in a carefully constructed online persona. While some people complained about how few Chileans spoke English, I was impressed when I saw an Egyptian blogger patiently practicing his Spanish with them—and given that he did so very well, I was even more surprised to learn that he’d only studied the language for a few months! Conversations with another Moroccan blogger I’d known from Twitter revealed the depth of his commitment to highlighting marginalized voices in a way I hadn’t previously realized.

In the best of all possible worlds, online interactions can set a more meaningful stage for personal interactions. If you put a bunch of strangers in a room together, I’d bet they’re more likely to comment on the weather than debate global warming, more likely to exchange platitudes about their children than discuss overpopulation. But if they already know each other from the Internet, then they’d have some ideas about the others’ interests and backgrounds—enough to start a better conversation. And better conversations, whether they happen on or offline, are what makes communicating with anyone—in any format—worthwhile.

Photo by Oso: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oso/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Citizen Media, Me, and You

2010-04-27T15:46:00.000-07:00

This is a guest post by Sarah Standish, a Global Citizen Corps staff member.

I started out at as a casual reader at Global Voices Online, an organization that publishes articles about what bloggers are saying all over the world. Little did I know that a year later I'd be recruited to volunteer for the project as a translator, and that only a year after that I'd be participating in GV's bi-annual summit--something that I couldn't be more exited about!

The Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2010 will take place in early May in Santiago, Chile, a location chosen because of all the fantastic citizen media projects that are going on there.

But wait a minute. What's citizen media?

Basically, citizen media is content produced by citizen journalists--people who aren't professional journalists but who still work to spread news and opinions by blogging, starting a website, making a video, taking photos, or engaging in a huge range of other activities. They do this in order to make space for news and opinions that don't often appear in the mainstream media.

When writing about global news, for example, newspapers tend to quote powerful government officials and senior analysts, but not the average citizens of the country where an event is taking place. Global Voices, on the other hand, is there to summarize and translate some of those citizens' opinions when they're written up in blogs.

This kind of citizen media isn't intended to replace newspapers and television stations, but to complement them, and the two can work together, like when the BBC cooperated with Global Voices after the recent earthquake there to report on the fact that Chilean bloggers were unhappy with the way the media was ignoring the devastation that indigenous communities had suffered.

I'll be blogging more about citizen media before and after the summit--what I've learned, and what citizen journalists from around the world are working on.

Keep in mind, though, that citizen media isn't just something other people do. Is there an issue in your community that the media isn't paying enough attention to? You can be a citizen journalist and do something about it too.

(Photo: The 2008 Global Voices Summit, from carribeanfreephoto on flickr)

World AIDS Day event is a huge success

2010-02-16T11:36:00.000-08:00

In Corvallis, Oregon a group of Global Citizen Corps students involved with their high school’s Human Rights Club had an idea to plan a dance in honor of World AIDS Day. They titled their dance the “Red Rave”, encouraging students to wear red to the event, and decided to send all the proceeds to Cascade AIDS Project (CAP), a local HIV/AIDS support and service organization.

Due to the school’s dance schedule, winter break, lack of support and a last minute location cancellation, the dance had to be postponed until January 30th. Despite all these complications, the group was still able to create an event that had a huge turnout of about 300 students from 2 high schools, raised $1,450 for CAP, and was a lot of fun. Not only did they raise money for CAP, but they gave students the opportunity to donate 1$ to support Mercy Corps’ Haiti efforts when they bought their tickets, raising a total of 150$ for Mercy Corps.

Liza, a GCC Leader, described the event:

“Everyone wore red to raise awareness about AIDS, and people got really into that and dressed really wildly. It was just a really great party, and no one wanted it to end. When we were cleaning up, the building employee told us that we would most likely be refunded the money it cost to rent the hall at the last minute ($350), since we were working for such a good cause!”

The group is now planning events for World Water Day on March 22nd, including ideas for a film viewing and garage sale.

Apply Now for the 2010-2011 Global Citizen Corps Leadership Program!

2010-02-10T11:09:00.000-08:00

The 2010-2011 Global Citizen Corps Leadership Application is now available online!

To apply, visit this website: http://www.globalcitizencorps.org/leadership/apply

The year-long Global Citizen Corps Leadership program works with 500 international youth leaders. Students work together to spread the word about root causes of critical global issues by mobilizing others to make a difference. Over one year, leaders work with Mercy Corps to get the training, knowledge, resources and tools to raise awareness and organize effective local actions that make a global impact.

Leaders will gain skills in four areas: Action Planning, Leadership Development, Multi-Media and Global Issues. With this training, students will have the knowledge and skills to organize powerful actions that address the problems such as global health, hunger, climate change and lack of access to education.

Application deadline is April 30th 2010. This application is available for US Leaders only.

Help For Haiti: A Portland student's fundraising effort

2010-02-09T12:24:00.000-08:00

Action +Awareness = Impact. That's what Global Citizen Corps is all about, and students who participate in the Leadership program prove this framework is possible.

Dina is a junior at Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon and a Global Citizen Corps Leader. She was quick to act when she found out about the devastation in Haiti after the earthquake on Tuesday January 12th. On Thursday, two days after the quake, Dina called an emergency meeting with fellow students at school to brainstorm ideas on how to help. They quickly came up with a simple fundraising idea – there was an open slot in the upcoming spirit assembly on Friday, a perfect place to ask the rest of the students for help as well.

Dina spoke to her 1,400 fellow high school students at the assembly, asking them each to donate one dollar to Mercy Corps to support relief efforts in Haiti. She explained how $1 might not seem like much, but if every student donated, it would be huge. To collect funds, students held boxes that said "Help for Haiti" at the assembly and at the doorways to the gymnasium after her speech. Students began carrying these boxes with them to their classrooms, and they set up a donation table at lunch time. On the first day, they were able to collect $325.. The next week they used the same routine of classroom collections and coined their lunchtime donation site "Lunch Change for Haiti".

One week after their initial announcement at the assembly, almost every student had donated a dollar – they raised $1,115 by using the equation Action + Awareness = Impact.

Dina is still working on collecting funds for Haiti and is planning an awareness project for World Water Day on March 22nd. Her fundraising work for Haiti caught national attention, and she is featured in a New York Times article about the success of small group fundraising. Check the article out here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/us/11charity.html.

Thank you Dina for making such a positive impact!

GCC World AIDS Day Event

2009-12-07T16:40:00.000-08:00

Global Citizen Corps leaders gathered to make some noise on Sunday, December 6th in Portland ,OR. With live music, facts and figures hanging from red balloons and a lot of energy they joined together to build awareness about the global AIDS Pandemic.

Last year 2.7 people became infected worldwide, half of which were young people between the ages of 15 and 24. That breaks down to nearly 6,000 people under 25 infected each day.

Now 33 million people around the world are living with HIV/AIDS and women account for 50 percent of those cases. Although the pandemic is worldwide, Sub-Saharan Africa has been hardest hit—the area accounts for around 10% of the world’s population but it accounts for 67% of all people living with HIV/AIDS.

Due to slightly increased access to improving drugs, the number of people living with HIV/AIDS has risen. Despite this around 2 million people still died of the disease in 2008.

All these scary statistics hung from the red balloons just above visitors’ heads at the Action Center in Portland to help people understand the realities of the AIDS pandemic.

Created with flickr slideshow.

Don't Stop Believing

2009-12-02T16:23:00.000-08:00

You know how certain songs can take you back to another time and place? For Global Citizen Corp leader Casey Drobnick the song “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey transports her back to one of her first experiences with the Global Citizen Corps community.

Casey had spent a summer in the Dominican Republic helping to build houses and was struggling to adjust to life back at home. With a new outlook on the world and her place in it she was feeling like her new way of seeing things was not shared by many people—until she found Global Citizen Corps.

After she joined he attended a leadership summit. For Casey the clear highlight of the summit was a two-hour video conference with like minded GCC leaders from Iraq. There she was in the middle of a large group of American kids, chatting and discussing serious issues with kids from Iraq! The Iraqi students sang traditional Kurdish songs and Casey and the other American kids sang “Don’t Stop Believing”—you know: “Just a small town girl, livin’ in a lonely world. She took the midnight train going anywhere!”

After the Global Citizen Corps Summit and the video conference Casey knew that she was not alone in his desire to see real change in the world. There are plenty of people with the same hopes and dreams—they just have to be found. And Global Citizen Corp is a great place to find them.

World AIDS Day

2009-12-02T16:11:00.000-08:00

By the end of the day AIDS was completely erased— at least in halls of Wilson High School. Global Citizen Corp Leaders there organized activities for World Aids Day on December 1st. The day is set aside for the world to focus on the continuing spread of the AIDS pandemic and to raise awareness on how to prevent it. To educate their peers GCC leaders wore red and encouraged their classmates to do the same in a display of solidarity with those afflicted. They put up posters around the school with facts and statistics and had a table set up in the hall where they passed out pins, ribbons and informational booklets. On the wall they had a banner that spelled out AIDS with condoms that were meant to be pulled off as a reminder of the simple things that can be done to prevent AIDS. By the end of the day the banner was blank, the table and posters were gone— any trace of AIDS had symbolically disappeared.

Gaza/Portland Student Leader Video Conference

2009-11-23T15:19:00.000-08:00

One of the coolest parts about GlobalCitizenCorps is how it provides great ways for student leaders across the world to meet and discuss the issues that affect them. On November 12th GCC Students from Gaza, Palestine met via video conference with fellow leaders in Portland Oregon. They discussed a wide range of topics--everything from food and music to what it's like to live in a war zone. By the end it was clear that both groups, half a world away, shared many of the same passions and goals for the world.

A River Ran Through It

2009-11-17T16:37:00.000-08:00

What would you do if your city’s livelihood suddenly dried up? Students in Khanaqin, Iraq faced this very question after their city’s river disappeared due to a dam that was built in Iran. They took their voices all the way to the Kurdish Parliament— this is their story.

Until recently agriculture was a main source of income for many of the people of Khanaqin. The climate was dry but the Alwand River flowed through providing the water needed to grow crops. The river also gave the city a source of drinking water, fish, and recreation.

Then a dam was built upstream in Iran. The water stopped flowing and the riverbed and fields became dry. Many of the townspeople lost their livelihood and were forced to flee to find food and a living elsewhere.

Many other towns along the path of the river, which originates deep in the mountains of Iran and empties into the Persian Gulf, also lost their sources of livelihood due to the river’s disappearance.

According to international law it is illegal to monopolize the use of a shared resource that crosses borders. Iran was perhaps unwittingly violating human rights however they seemed unperturbed by the struggles they had induced. The struggling people downstream were angry but did not know what to do.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Enter Omar W, a Global Citizen Corps leader. He and a group of fellow students created a plan to get their story heard and to inspire action. They visited 22 affected villages along the river path and compiled a list of data. In the areas they visited they found that with the river gone, agriculture as the main source of income, had dropped from 95% of people to around 5 % and 43 families had to emigrate from the area due to drought.

Then they gathered more than 100 people and 15 international channels for a conference called “Restoring Life to the Alwand River.” The conference produced a set of ideas on how to proceed. First: Request a meeting with the Kurdish Parliament. Next: Try to get media coverage and political pressure on Iran increased. And finally: consider the construction of their own dam on the Iraqi side of the border to trap any water still trickling and save it for summer.

It is not easy to get a meeting with anyone from the Parliament. Omar and the group made many phone calls requesting some face time and finally a meeting with Dr. Arsalan Baiz, the Vice President of the Parliament was granted with only 12 hours notice. They were a 9 hour car-trip away but packed up quickly and drove all night to the Kurdish Capital making sure their statements and requests were just right on the way.

The ideas from the conference were discussed with Dr. Arsalan along with the possibility of securing annual water ratios and potential compensation for the affected areas. The Vice President thanked the group and promised to

take their issues before the entire parliament.

Omar and those who joined him for the cause left very proud of all they had been able to accomplish. They felt a new sense of empowerment—that they could really make a difference.

Leadership Summit Inspires Teens to Become Activists

2009-10-27T15:15:00.000-07:00

Here is a news article about the Global Citizen Corps Leadership to go along with the video and pictures posted below.

High school students from across the country met in New York in early October and participated in a Leadership Training Summit. The Summit take place every year to encourage and assist young people interested in global activism. Similar summits were held at the same time in other parts of the world. Meetings were set up via satellite allowing the New York group to see and chat and even sing with the Iraqi group!

www.voanews.com

www.globalcitizencorps.org

More From the Leadership Summit in Portland

2009-10-27T14:31:00.000-07:00

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

www.globalcitizencorps.org

GCC Leadership Summit 2009: Portland

2009-10-27T13:42:00.000-07:00

The Mercy Corps Global Headquarters in Portland Oregon hosted its very first Global Citizen Corps (GCC) Youth Leadership Summit from October 9^th through 12^th! The summit brought together 25 high school leaders and GCC alumni from across the US to develop their awareness and provide tools for action on global issues such as hunger, health, climate change, human rights, conflict and access to education.

The students who met in Portland are part of an international program that connects youth leaders from around the world through online dialogue and action projects. The program is now active in the USA, UK, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian Territories.

Student leaders participated in discussions and workshops on the issues with Mercy Corps staff, an amazing crew of Global Citizen Corps alumni, guest speakers, and went on local field trips. They were also able to participate in a live video conference with their peers in Iraq to discuss the issue of access to education, and they ended the event with a talk from Mercy Corps CEO, Neal Keny-Guyer.

www.globalcitizencorps.org

Global Citizen Corps on Blogger.com

2009-10-27T13:14:00.001-07:00

Welcome to the Global Citizen Corps' blog! If you're not familiar with us, we are a part of Mercy Corps, an international development organization that works in over 38 countries around the world. Global Citizen Corps is Mercy Corps’ international youth program that brings high school and university aged students together to make a difference on the issues that matter.

Our theory is Awareness + Action = Impact. Students from around the globe discuss issues like climate change, conflict, education, health, human rights, hunger and water. They learn how to take action on these issues in their communities and how together we can make a collective impact. This blog is about this international network of youth who are determined to make a difference. It’s also a way for you to get involved. Welcome, enjoy and don't forget to check out www.globalcitizencorps.org to get involved in the conversation or learn more about ways you can build awareness and take action.