How to be an Awesome Global Citizen (and how to talk about it in higher education)

Free Conference Call sponsored by ACPA's Commissions for Global Dimensions of Student Development and Student Involvement

Date: Wednesday, May 4, 2011, 12:00-1:30pm (EST - please make adjustments if you are in a different time zone.) Please register by May 3, 2011. Conference dial-in number: Conference dial-in number: (712) 432-0900 Participant access code: 136500 **** NEW call number posted after 4/2011). Thank you for your flexibility.

Cost: Normal long distance charges will apply. (Callers will be charged for long-distance service on their phone bill.).

Abstract: It took me three years of nearly constant travel in Africa, Asia, South America, and Europe to learn how to be an awesome global citizen. Fortunately, you can learn how to help your students become awesome global citizens much more quickly. This seminar will help. Potential material includes:
• What it really means to be a global citizen
• The fundamental connections between all humans
• How our actions as individuals in the West really affect the rest of the world
• What sort of international aid works and what sort of international aid doesn't work
• How to be an awesome global citizen And most importantly, how to effectively discuss, frame, and structure these issues in the college setting.

Speaker: Jason Connell
Jason believes that one the surest ways to build a better planet is by getting college students involved with service and leadership in the developing world.

At the fresh young age of 20, Jason Connell was a content, ambitious, and confident liberal arts student in sunny Florida. And like many other young people in similarly cozy situation, he thought his future would be relatively comfortable and straightforward: graduate from college, find a good job, and generally enjoy the rather hospitable hand that destiny had dealt him.

Then….he spent a semester abroad in China. And everything changed.

Mesmerized at the core by a world “outside of America,” – a world that featured unbelievable cultural wealth, contrasted with stark economic poverty and impenetrable sociopolitical obstacles – Jason resolved to explore all he could until his dried-up savings forced him to stop. And while dropping out of college was a necessary consequence of this “change in life plan,” any disappointment was far outweighed by the array of astonishing new experiences, and nourishing personal relationships, that he cultivated during this seminal time. Now 24 years old, and equipped with a Political Science degree, Jason has volunteered in some of the world’s poorest areas. He has seen, heard, felt, and experienced things so removed from his quaint college life, that it’s hard to believe that it was only a handful of years ago; it truly feels like a handful of lives ago.

Dedicated to applying what he has experienced to change the world, an abbreviated list of Jason’s volunteer efforts to-date include: developing a microlending program in Uganda, conducting research on the effects of globalization in Thailand, and teaching HIV/AIDS prevention classes for high risk children in South Africa. Jason is also the Executive Director of the Changing the World 101 program, which provides college students with insights and strategies on volunteering and leading abroad so that they can effectively -- as the program name promises -- change the world. When not volunteering or inspiring others to do the same, Jason is an in-demand international speaker, and lives in Washington, DC. To learn more about Jason see: http://www.changingtheworld101.com/