#GhanaGCC2017: What Did We Learn?
Last month, we gathered in Ghana to help answer one big question: What is the role of a Global Citizen in a world that is in flux? Here is what we learned!
Some key answers we picked up from a reflection session with Melton Fellows at the conclusion of our 2017 Global Citizenship Conference included:
- Being resilient through change
- Understanding failure as a part of the process
- Developing a sense of ownership and responsibility
- Nurturing critical curiosity and self-education
- Being brave and keeping faith
- Questioning personal biases
- Knowing shared problems and applying similar solutions
- Being reflective and respectful
How had participants arrived at these conclusions?
From Springboard Sessions to Hands-on Project, Melton fellows had immersed themselves in a variety of activities that provided inspiration and tools for coming up with new ways to engage their communities as global citizens.
Taking Global Citizenship into the field – Sesa Mu co-founder Dan Poku explains the tricks of the trade of cultivating pineapples.
While working with Sesa Mu, an agri-development organization in Berekuso (Ghana), Destiny Lee, Junior Fellow from New Orleans, shared,
“Sesa Mu is a novel social business start-up that produces dried pineapples in Berekuso. The Melton Foundation held design thinking workshops where Melton Fellows worked alongside this social enterprise to produce a prototype that would service the business and the community alike. We worked together to enhance consumer base and expand capacity building for optimal economic growth. And I think we were able to come up with interesting prototypes and design ideas to widen the consumer base.”
Together with The Ahote Sanitation Project (TASaP), Melton Fellows developed an engagement model for the local community to embrace sanitation and environmental sustainability.
Near the conclusion of the Conference, Melton Fellows went from coming up with a simple, individual Act of Global Citizenship, and moved forward to designing and forming the Project Teams that they would be working in the year to come. A fun and interactive activity helped connect Fellows based on their shared passion for particular issues, and in small groups, they collected ideas about how to tackle the respective issue collaboratively in different locations around the globe. At the end of the session, each project team shared their vision and how they hoped to achieve their goal within the coming year.
Providing space, opportunity and a platform to openly discuss good practice and lessons learned in projects from around the world, the Global Citizenship Showcase became a breeding ground for inspiration and to develop ideas for meaningful actions.
The #GhanaGCC2017 ended with lots of potential and plans. With a mindset to soon put their plans into execution, participants charged up for the coming days, weeks, and months on campus and at work. We’ll be sharing more about their journey and #100 Acts soon!
In short: It’s been a transformative and educative experience, as though seeing through a looking glass onto a world that has so much room for betterment and togetherness. Understanding our role in a constantly changing world, we dispersed with a resolve to turn that change into a positive one. The call for a paradigm shift has indeed never been more clearer.
Another important take-away from the #GhanaGCC2017: a group picture. What a group!
