Traveller’s blog no 12 - Mauricio

Monday, 7 April 2008 | posted by Matt_BC
General, Guildford 2008

First of all I would like to thank the British Council for the opportunity of living the fabulous experience that I had at Guildford on January 2008.

We started the forum on Monday at lunch, everybody was eager to meet all of the others 59 youngsters that were there at Guildford, we where divided into different teams such as: colors, Swiss places, teams of 3, etc. The week started off great, we worked with two facilitators, Linda and John who in overall they thought us how to speak in public, control ourselves, how to use your voice, how to use the body language in your favor, etc.

During the week we had man different activities such as a debate which stated if the world map should be redrawn, my position was in favor and we worked as a team in making our points, the most interesting part about this was that you were debating about the world, with literally, people from all over the world, it was great to hear different perspectives in relation to the countries that everybody came from. We also had to do a 3 minute video supposing we had 3 minutes on CNN International in which we would like to create awareness of global issues to the people watching, it was a challenge that in 3 hours we needed to elaborate the video that would air on CNN and would have had a lot of audience. All of these made us realize that we are not alone, we don't fight by ourselves, we are one as a whole and fight as one, I learned how to manage myself in different obstacles that I could have in my life, how to overcome them, after sharing my experience to the other 59 youngsters there and hearing theirs I came up to the conclusion that we face the same problems so we started to come up with ideas on how to tackle those problems and succeed, I found it great to the that, the most important thing is that I am now certain that I am not alone anymore, because sometimes we face the problem of not being backed up by people, friends, sponsors, etc. But after this I don't feel alone anymore I now that like me there are many other teenagers that really want to make a difference, that on a day to day basis we are changing the world, we are making it a better place to live in.

Combining the different cultures and world perspectives was the best thing the British Council could do for this to be as it was a successful project. Just the fact of interacting with people all over the world was a fabulous experience, having breakfast with Chinese and New Zealanders, lunch with someone from Kosovo and the USA, and having dinner with a Latin-American and a German was just too much for me, I learned so many things in that week, so many information, just learning by experience, listening was crucial during the week, just listen to the others, listen to the youth voices around the world. We came up with the Global Youth Network in that combining the experience of youngsters worldwide we can come up with global solutions to our problems, I think this was a great outcome of that week we had at Guildford.

This past months I've been meeting with the Mexican Youth Institute to work out some new projects that will be going out hopefully in August, I've been also working in the organization of a National Youth and Families Reunion that will be in 2 weeks and we'll have around 12,000 people which will be having different conferences and activities involving values, virtues, awareness, etc. I'm also eager to start working with Luke and Whitney in the development of a new project which has already been supported by the British Council.

I would like to thank the British Council and all the ones involved in this project "Road to Davos 2008" for all their attentions during the week and making this a wonderful week for everyone, and get ready because the Guildford 2008 alumni are just starting.

And you 59 others, remember you can always count on me for whatever you like.

Take care,

Mauricio Barrera