Global Changemakers

What’s been happening at the Global Changemakers nerve central? Which synapses have we been firing lately? What’s going on at the Bern office?

Well, the biggest announcement is that we’ve selected the 60 participants for the Latin America Youth Summit. It hasn’t been easy, since so many applications were really strong, but we’re certain that the 60 selected candidates will be worthy additions to the Global Changemakers network. In case anyone’s interested, these are the countries that will be represented at the LAYS 2010:

• Afghanistan
• Argentina
• Bahamas
• Bolivia
• Brazil
• Chile
• Colombia
• Costa Rica
• Egypt
• England
• Grenada
• Guyana
• Indonesia
• Jamaica
• Mexico
• Northern Ireland
• Paraguay
• Peru
• Philippines
• St Kitts & Nevis
• Trinidad & Tobago
• United States
• Uruguay
• Venezuela
• Zimbabwe

We sent out e-mails to all applicants today, informing them whether they were selected or not. If you haven’t received a mail, chances are that your e-mail address wasn’t entered properly during registration. However, we’ve confirmed the addresses of all the selected participants, so unless you’ve received a mail saying that you’ve been selected, you’re unfortunately one of the unlucky ones.

If you’re in the latter group: thank you very much for your time and effort – we hope that the results aren’t too discouraging. I’m afraid we won’t be able to give individual feedback to the people who weren’t selected, but here are a couple of tips, though, for future applications:

• Make sure that your video communicates your points clearly! If you have a video where we can hardly hear what you’re saying because there’s too much noise or because you’ve put loud music over it, chances are you won’t get the full points for communication.
• Be confident and ambitious – we need to get the impression that you wish to use the summit you’re applying for in order to take your activism or entrepreneurship to the next level. If we feel that you’ll just do more of the same after returning from the summit, then we’d rather pick someone who will do more.
• There is such a thing as being too confident and ambitious – also be realistic. If you say you’ll go from some volunteering once a week to creating a global NGO that will eradicate poverty, we might think a reality check is in order.
• Be yourself – often the best Changemakers are natural communicators. Obviously you’ll want to highlight your strengths and downplay your weaknesses, but we’re not looking for applications that are tightly-scripted, rehearsed and as polished and impersonal as a news broadcast. We want to get a feel for who you are.

That’s it on the Latin America Youth Summit for the moment. A couple of shorter, general points:

• Gaby’s again doing a Skype chat on Wednesday this week. The account name is global.changemakers and Gaby will be online from 3-4pm CET (2-3pm UK time).
• Fran’s sending you some food for thought: Who’s Your Daddy? (a Fathers Day-themed link from Foreign Policy), The Tea Party Jacobins (from the New York Review of Books) and Yuan Rises to New High on Dollar (from the Wall Street Journal). Whether you agree or not with the points made, some interesting stuff to think about!