The Latin America Youth Summit 2010 is just around the corner - but ten Changemakers from Brazil, Colombia, Paraguay, Mexico, Nepal, Tunisia, Zimbabwe, Vietnam and the UK are already busy in Rio de Janeiro. They’re the peer facilitators being trained by John Martin, our facilitator extraordinaire, to help with the running of the upcoming summit.

Over the next 1 1/2 weeks, the peer facilitators will be providing daily updates on the goings-ons in Brazil. For a first taste of things, check out these impressions of day 1 of the training!

We’re now almost 10 days into the call for application for this year’s Global Youth Summit - so far, 428 people have applied, and there are nine days left in the application period.

Make sure to send us your application - both the written application and the YouTube video - by 6 August! You will find the relevant information if you follow this link. Make sure to read and follow the instructions!

Also, if you are already a Global Changemakers and have taken part in one of our summits, you may be interested in applying as a peer facilitator. For more information on the peer facilitator application process, click on this link.

P.S.: We are encountering some technical problems with the website’s comment threads - unfortunately we are unable to access and respond to some of the questions already posted about the call for applications. If you have any unanswered questions that aren’t answered by the links above, please post them in the comments below. Thank you!

Hello hello,

It’s team Tuesday and I was compelled to write something about our team ...

Well, there are now 3 team members in the Berne office today. Matt left yesterday for Rio to help on the peer facilitators training for the LAYS (Latin America Youth Summit). He and Louise are currently strolling Rio and waiting for our peers to reach their destination.

Kath is at the moment taking Capoeira and Portuguese lessons but asked  the participants of the LAYS to look up for facts and figures of their home countries as this information will prove valuable for some of the workshops we will be holding.

That leaves Fran, Zahid and myself to try to hold the front.

Fran is trying to cope with her bridesmaid’s role at her sister’s wedding and though she’s constantly complaining about the dress she’ll need to wear we all know she secretly loves it.

A piece of exciting news she has is that we will be distributing in 76 countries our toolkit through a partnership with Peace Corps (http://www.peacecorps.gov/). A big thank you to Simon Moss who was instrumental on the realisation of this toolkit that will now be used by hundreds of young people around the world to design and implement their projects.
 

For those who were wondering about Zahid…. He is our new intern and our very own Changemaker!

He’s been with us for the last couple of weeks, so I asked him to write up his impressions of Berne and the team:

’Walking through Bern station with no one to welcome me, German speaking, Stared out,

I was uneasy from the start.  Had I made the right decision? Was Switzerland really the place for me? I knew I was doing this for one reason only, Global Changemakers and making that difference.

Moved into Gabby’s spare room, surrounded by amazing Swiss views and that unusually sounding donkey across the road, it wasn’t home…But it was the closest thing to it. I will always remember the hospitality I received and Gabby’s continuous “EAT, EAT”… It felt strange to leave Gabby’s and moving to my own flat…like leaving home AGAIN. The new flat is amazing; roommates are crazy, wanting to jog around Bern at 3AM and go to random parties uninvited… It’s an Experience after all.
 
In my 1st week as being the new intern, I shared my thoughts with my good friend BoBo (Bongani), “what is it like at the office?” he asked… And my famous reply “everyone’s old, I feel out of place”… out came the “LOL”… Things have changed… These oldies seem more youthful/ childish than me… Random laughter in team meetings, garden gnomes cleaning Fran’s room and other things which shouldn’t be mentioned. It is now my 3rd week of work here, and I feel part of the furniture, everyone has made me feel so welcome… And I think it will be hard to leave…

I am actually enjoying work, which I never knew I would. I love the fact that I get to keep in touch with all you Global Changemakers, it makes my move to the GCM office so much more worthwhile. One thing I’m hating is Katherine’s continuous Excel sheets…I’m sure she doesn’t need them, and just likes to keep me busy.. That’s all for now… Contact me if you need anything, I am now the “insider” at GCM office.. ‘



That’s it for today Changemakers, enjoy your Tuesday and I shall see some of you tomorrow on SKYPE from 13:00 -14:00 CET

On Mondays, http://www.global-changemakers.net turns into Speakers’    Corner: members of the network and community have their say on their   work and the issues that concern them.

Sending a ‘loving’ message

The picture below shocked me to the core when I first saw it. Shocked me in a way I have not been shocked in a long time and made me think long and hard about the state of the world in which we live. But first I suppose I have to explain what it is.
The girls in the photo are Israeli, and they are in an army barracks writing messages on missiles that include words like “From Israel with love”. The author of the website which showed the photos to the world asked himself a question which rung true, do these girls realise that those missiles will be used to kill little girls just like them whose only crime is being Lebanese?


But for me the question ran deeper still. What happens when the prejudices of our fathers, of our grand-fathers and all the ancestors who came before them are distilled down to the youngest of the young and passed on to the newest generations? The answer is what has always happened since the dawn of time: war, intolerance and hatred spread in the name of us against them, right against perceived wrong, me against everybody else.

Because in the end it is not enough to talk about breaking old habits and destroying prejudices and easing tensions if those exact same habits are to be passed to us the generation that is responsible for building the future. It is like building a new house with bricks from the old one that collapsed and killed our favourite cat; the house might be new but our favourite pet is still not safe. So this is the time that we the new generation, the real change makers in every sense of the word have to ask ourselves; have we really changed as a society, as a family, as individuals? Do we carry the values that we personally preach or have we unconsciously carried them in our psychological baggage to be transmitted to the following age ad-infinitum?

I have asked myself that question and as an individual I have found a lot of things I have carried with me from a past I do not fully understand into a future I cannot fully vouch for as a result. As a Zimbabwean I must confess, that some of the tribal stereotypes were still hanging around my neck when I interacted with fellow Zimbabweans. I did not go as far as some of my friends do who will hate someone simply because they are of a different tribe but it was still there and I had to deal with it. As a Christian living in a Muslim country I have encountered many negative perceptions from my hosts but realised that as I stepped off the plane in Algiers I myself carried images of bombs and fanaticism in my head; I have had three years to deal with and change all those. Ask yourself the question; what stereotypes do I still carry with me? Deal honestly with the answer.

It also underlines the work that all of us are doing in our communities worldwide, working with young people and opening up a whole new world of possibilities. Be it a project that touches one person or a thousand we are dispelling and dealing with the past and opening up a future that can be, for once, different from the past that came before it. The world is no longer just about those who do not have versus those who do have, it is those who know against those who do not know as well. There is some important book or school (can’t remember what, could somebody help me out here please?) that has the motto, “Know thyself”. I remember being struck by the power of those two words years ago and I cannot help but wonder that if those girls truly knew what those bombs meant in relation to themselves and their targets, they would not be smiling.

We have to start from the ground up, rainbow constitutions do not guarantee rainbow nations, having religions that teach about love doesn’t mean people still do not go at loggerheads with each other. Bill Clinton once said, “We have the chance to build a 21st century world that walks away from the modern horrors of bio and chemical terrorism and from ancient racial, religious and tribal hatred…we can do it – not by going back to the past, but by going together into the future”.

As we walk into the future, let us just make sure we do not leave ourselves or those little girls behind.

- Bongani Ncube, Global Changemaker

Are you a member of the http://www.global-changemakers.net  community? Do you have something to say?  Send your blog entries to me!    The best entries will be published on Mondays’ Speakers’ Corner. (Blog   entries should be submitted as Word documents. Please attach any   pictures you have separately.)

Last Monday the call for applications for the fifth annual Global Youth Summit went live, and we’ve already received a fair number of applications. (Note to applicants: don’t forget the video, though!)

As started at last year’s Global Youth Summit and continued at the upcoming Latin America Youth Summit, we’ll again be training peer facilitators to work with John Martin, facilitating the GYS 2010 in November. We’re looking for people who fit the following profile:

• They can make themselves be available in the UK from 16-27 November.
• They have taken part in a previous Global Changemakers summit but haven’t yet received training as peer facilitators.
• They are 25 or younger at the start of the Global Youth Summit (21 November).

If you fit this profile, check out the application details here!

If you have any questions or problems concerning the call for peer facilitators, please contact me.

P.S.: If you are one of the participants of the upcoming Latin America Youth Summit and are interested in applying for one of the peer facilitator positions, please understand that your chances of being selected are slim. One of the criteria we evaluate when choosing peer facilitators is the work Changemakers have done since their initial engagement. Therefore your chances will be much better once you’ve actually done follow-up work after the summit - for instance for one of the 2011 summits!