GYV Alum off to Indonesia!

Alyssa is GYV 2010 and 2011 alum and currently a junior in high school. She  is also an athlete and aspiring future civil servant with a deep interest in learning more about other cultures. Alyssa is participating in Legacy’s Indonesia-U.S. Youth Leadership Exchange (IULX) and is now  in Indonesia! As part of her IULX project, Alyssa has put together an environmental project in her hometown of Broomfield that is encouraging her peers to reduce waste. She will be educating her fellow students on waste reduction and utilization techniques such as composting. Read more about Alyssa’s trip in an interview with the Boulder Daily Camera.

From an Northern Irish alum

Philip and Julie Kane

Name: Phillip Kane

Nationality: British

GYV Staff/ Participant during: First session, 1998

Education: Aeronautical Engineering Diploma in 2000. HNC Manufacturing Engineering 2011

Occupation: Aircraft Structural Fitter

Most Interesting Country Visited: USA of course!

Favorite GYV Memory: Meeting loads of interesting people with all sorts of backgrounds, religions, and beliefs. I have so many other memories that with stay with me forever.

Volunteer/Civic Engagement since Global Youth Village: I coached junior football (soccer) for kids ages 5-16 years old. I also volunteered as a mentor for young adults dealing with substance abuse.

Biography: I was born and grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland.  I went through protestant schooling until the age of 17 when I left with O.K.  grades.  In Northern Ireland, there is a lot if hostility between the Protestant and Catholics. I grew up fighting with people of the same age as me over religion, as a teenager we really didn’t know why we were fighting.  As I grew older I was more aware if the history if our country and why the animosity was there.

My mother and father raised my two brothers and me well and taught us not to show any disrespect towards any faith or religion.
My father always says, “it’s nice to be important, but, its more important to be nice” and this has stayed with me since I was young.

In 1997 got an apprenticeship at a local aircraft manufacturing company in Belfast (bombardier) and completed my certificate in September 2000. In between my studies, in June 1998 I got a chance of going to GYV with a friend of mine.

Going to GYV at 18 showed me how other cultures integrate and live side by side. I enjoyed the workshops, team building and activities that was put on for us and a lot of what I learned has stuck by me every since.

I stayed at the company for 5 years before leaving and becoming a self employed aircraft structural fitter.  I spent 4 years traveling around the UK and Europe working for various aircraft manufacturers and airports.  During this time I got married to my beautiful wife Julie in 2007.  It was honestly the best day of my life. I am now back working for Bombardier in Belfast and hope to start a family soon.  I have two wee dogs Ruby and Lily who are miniature daschunds (sausage dogs).

I want to thank everyone at GYV that took time from their own lives to mentor a bunch of moody teenagers.  I can honestly say it changed my way of thinking about other people’s religious beliefs, their cultures and their way of life.

GYV Participants serve with Feeding America

This Thanksgiving, many of us have much to be grateful for and will be celebrating with a big meal. But did you know that 1 in 6 Americans may not have much of anything on their tables this Thanksgiving?  Participants at the Global Youth Village  international summer program grappled with the severe issue of hunger this summer and helped to prepare and serve a meal at a local soup kitchen operated by Feeding America. Feeding America is the country’s largest domestic hunger relief charity.  GYV youth  found their service trip to be a rewarding experience. Israel Ortiz  said, ” I had no idea that hunger was such a serious issue in our country.  I’m glad I’m more educated about it…and that I helped  cook and a serve a meal to my fellow citizens.”  In total, participants donated more than 100 hours of service to Feeding America.

Here are some shocking facts about hunger in America:

-In 2010, 48.8 million Americans lived in food insecure households, 32.6 million adults and 16.2 million children.

-In 2010, 4.8 percent of all U.S. households (5.6 million households) accessed emergency food from a food pantry one or more times.

Test your knowledge to see how much you know about hunger in America by taking the following quiz.

(Source: www.feedingamerica.org)

Berg wins city council seat in Lafayette, CO!

Staff Alum Christine Berg S’ 03-06 recently won a city council seat in Lafayette, Colorado! Go Christine! Christine worked at Global Youth Village as Youth Director a few years ago.  She is looking forward to serving her city. To read more about Christine’s election, check out her interview in the Boulder Daily Camera.

GYV: A truly life-changing experience for Georgi

Name: Georgi Vogel Rosen

Nationality: American

GYV Staff/Participant during: P’92 – ’96

Education: Bachelor’s degree from Smith College in Sociology with a concentration in Third World Development Studies and a master’s from the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management

Occupation: Assistant Director of Program Evaluation at a nonprofit serving at-risk youth and families

Most Interesting Country Visited: Czech Republic (it’s where my grandfather was born)

Favorite GYV Memory: If you had asked me 15 years ago, I probably would have said the Dine (Navajo) giving ceremony or the Tajik/Uzbek cultural night where we all learned Central Asian dances. But in retrospect, my favorite memory of GYV is a set of three experiences in the summer of 1995 that had an extraordinary impact on me and continue to affect me to this day. First, a group of campers participated in a panel discussion in which they candidly described their experiences fleeing war or persecution. Hearing these terrifying stories told by those whom I considered close friends shook me deeply. I still remember my horror and the awe I felt for my friends’ resilience and courage. Later in the summer, my Global Issues and Leadership group set up a “hunger banquet” at lunchtime in which we randomly divided the participants and staff into three groups, corresponding with then-current statistics on world hunger. The smallest group received a large, indulgent meal. A slightly larger group had a very simple, bland meal, while the majority was given just a small bowl of rice. We intended to simulate the international disparity in consumption and poverty. Everything seemed very abstract when we were setting up the event: hunger had never been an issue for me. It was just a topic I had seen on the news or a cause we would donate a can of soup to around Thanksgiving. It never occurred to me that I would know someone for whom hunger had been a reality. Once we started the banquet though, it was very clear that for some of us, hunger was not an abstract concern but rather a memory from childhood. As with the refugee panel, I was very deeply moved by many of my friends’ comments, and I left wanting to do something to help. The next week or so, the Global Issues and Leadership group went on a field trip to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in DC, and we met with a staffer who told us about the UN’s efforts to help refugees. She told me that there were refugee resettlement agencies around the world and gave me the contact info for one in my community. I ended up volunteering there for years and later returned to work as a case manager. Those three experiences at GYV had such a fundamental impact on me that it’s hard to believe they happened over a period of just a few weeks.

Volunteer/Civic Engagement since Global Youth Village: Right now I am very active in efforts to strengthen Jewish-Muslim relations and counter the rise in Islamophobia in the United States. I also volunteer at two local civil rights organizations that work to combat housing discrimination and promote LGBT equality, and I volunteer with another project that helps reconnect Boston area refugees with loved ones from whom they were separated during war or genocide. I also serve on the steering committee of a group that matches young adult volunteers with non-profit organizations around Boston.

Biography: I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island in the United States with my mother and several pets. Ever since I was a little kid, I adored animals, and that passion led me to become a vegetarian when I was eight years old. A few years later, I came across a book called “Kids Can Save the Animals,” which referenced two vegetarian summer camps in North America: one was an outdoors camp that offered sailing, canoeing, kayaking and rock climbing lessons, and the other was a small camp in Virginia and had something to do with multiculturalism and leadership development. I didn’t really know what either of those things meant, but the camp had neither boats nor meat, and that was good enough for me. And that’s how I ended up at the Legacy International summer program, now known as the Global Youth Village. Few people can say that their summer camp shaped their adult lives, but GYV inspired interests and passions that I never could have conceived before arriving in 1992. Since GYV, I have traveled to several amazing countries, including Kenya, India, Costa Rica, the Philippines and most recently Ukraine, and volunteering on human and civil rights issues has been a huge part of my life. I now live in Brookline, Massachusetts, with my dog (Ralphie) and cat (Maggie), and I work at a wonderful non-profit that serves some of the most at-risk kids and families in the state.

2012 Summer Dates for Staff

Staff are hired for 6.5 to 7.5 weeks, depending on the position.  (Dates will be discussed with candidates during interviews.  Returning staff options may vary.)

• Staff Training:  June 13, 14 or 15 – 23, 2012  (All staff new to the GYV experience are required to attend staff training.)
• Session 1, Indonesia-US Exchange:  June 24 – July 3, 2012
• Intersession; Preparing for Session 2:  July 3 – 6, 2012
• Session 2, Peace Building Program:  July 7  – 16, 2012
• Intersession, Preparation for Session 3:  July 16 – 18, 2012
• Session 3, Peace Building Program:  July 19 – 29, 2012
• Staff Wrap-up:  July 29 – August 1, 2012
• Community Involvement Project:  just a small number of staff are hired to work in this service/travel program (local & Washington, DC based); July 30 – August 4, 2012

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