Global Changemakers

Volunteerism exists across many countries and cultures, but three things are constant among all volunteers:

• They volunteer because they know that what they’re doing is for the general good.
• They do what they do (i.e., offering their resources) for free.
• They freely choose and decide to be volunteers.

This, at least, is what we agreed upon on the first (and only) break-out panel presentation I attended at the 2nd World Summit for Youth Volunteering in Barranquilla, Colombia earlier this month. The summit lasted for three days, but I was able to freely choose and attend only one panel (and I chose “Volunteering and Education” due to my work with Checkmyschool) because for the remaining two panel opportunities, I was a presentor.

This was the summit stage and the audience/participants — a total of around 700+ young volunteers from all over the world. It was a good number, to be sure, but we represented not even 1% of the millions of volunteers in the world who (invisibly and unconsciously) collaborate to generate a better world. Just think about it: all together, volunteers contribute US$400 billion to the world economy (according to Daniel Buritica of Recojo)! I can’t even begin to wrap my head around that amount, but it’s real. This is even more reason for volunteers to unite, for us to put more emphasis on “service learning” and making volunteering feel like a very natural part of life (yes, volunteering is amazing and commendable, but the goal is to reach a point where it is also just like going to school, finding a job, getting married– just natural!). We volunteer not just to change the world but to gain positive experiences in our individual lives.

Networking is one of the central goals of every summit/conference, and I couldn’t be prouder everytime I introduced myself with the line, “My name is Joseph Mansilla, I am a British Council Global Changemaker” (cue whipping out of GCM business card). Collectively with four other GCMs, we made quite a splash at the summit, highlighted by our panel presentation on the second day:

Our topic was “Learning from the Grassroots: How Networks and Individuals Make Change Happen” and that’s exactly what we successfully delivered with our dynamic presentation. (Felix’s name was erroneously written on the hand-outs)

It was a real team effort between David, Laura, Olga, Sam, and myself to accomplish what we traveled to Barranquilla for (a travel consisting of a total of 7 flights and almost 4 days for me).

David started with a classic GCM energizer, then Laura came to help him as they introduced the Global Changemakers programme, which we then fleshed out and brough to life with presentations of our individual projects (mine, just to rub it in deeper, was about Checkmyschool). You can view our Powerpoint presentation here. We ended by showing the GCM Toolkit and sharing the ways they could have access to it and more importantly, how they could become Changemakers/changemakers themselves!

Needless to say, it was a very fulfilling, enriching experience. It was my first time to present in a panel in a conference, and I think I’d want to be part of more! Our audience was very receptive and genuninely enthusiastic about what we had to say, and certainly we, too, had much to learn from their inputs, comments, and questions. A testament to their enthusiasm was when Camilo, a participant in our panel, invited us to talk in his university in Bogotá! We did it the week after Barranquilla, and I’ll talk about it in my next post. Stay tuned!