Global Changemakers

After five days sleeping only about 4 hours per day you can probably imagine what it was like to wake everyone up.  The most repeated phrase was “I can’t believe the World Economic Forum is starting today!!” – I’m not allowed to post the rest of the comments, let’s just say we learnt to speak in Dutch.

At 9 am and after BADALAKAGA-ing most of the way to a place near the Cartagena’s Covention Center where the World Economic Forum is taking place, we got a meeting with Luis Guillermo Plata, Minister of Trade and Tourism of Colombia. During the meeting we talked about a lot of things but for me it was very special when he talked to us about potential and leadership, let me paraphrase him:

“You can’t live being told you’ve got potential, as you grow and reach a certain age and they still tell you that it’s because you haven’t done anything good with your life.”

 

“The good leader is the one who builds teams, motivate their team and establish process that will be followed even in his absence.”

That was really inspiring and made us think about it a lot.

In the afternoon, Laura and I went to the World Bank private meeting on business priorities for Education and we both were selected to be note-takers in our respective tables.  We rocked!! They acknowledged our proposals and ideas along with our opinions.  We made interesting contacts and the World Bank got interested in our fabulous network of 600 young activists around the WORLD to the point she said she would like to make contact to invite Changemakers to summits organized by them.

I also got to meet my social entrepreneur mentor. He’s a wonderful person: Martin Burt, Founder and Executive Chief of Fundación Paraguaya. After that we went to a Gender Empowerment event we were invited to, we got out early to talk with Professor Jacques, who is a Brazilian and in charge of organizing the  Closing plenary.  You can see we’re rocking!! That’s the only way he could get interested in the Global Changemakers to be present and have a speaking role in that event.  I’m really proud to say that the professor got really interested in the Itaipú example I gave about international cooperation for development.

For the impact we have with the Minister we met in the morning he invited us to join a meeting with the Young Global Leaders where the President of Colombia will be present.  We’re also meeting the Vice-president and other important authorities.

Everyone asks us “Are you Global Young Leaders” and we say proudly “No, we are Global Changemakers from the British Council” and we are here to make the change! Someday we will be Global Young Leaders! We are representing you Changemakers, passionately the best way we can!

There are a lot more adventures to come!  The LA 5 aka “Los 5 fantásticos” give you the warmest (and craziest) of their greetings.

Cheers,

David