Organized by 18 ITBA students who believe in dialogue and action as means to contribute to the development of South America, the SABF is an annual three-day conference that brings together 40 prominent leaders with 100 university students from around the world.

The South American Business Forum (SABF) is an inspiring initiative of a small group of university students. For the past five years, they have been coming together and investing their free time to organize a three-day annual event which is held in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The idea of organizing the SABF began when 4 students from ITBA University had the pleasure of attending events in Switzerland and the USA, in which students and business, political, social and academical leaders where brought together for three days to discuss, exchange ideas and generate solutions to the issues that the world is facing. There began the idea that a similar conference tackling the issues of the South American region could be done in Argentina.

An initial group of 12 students was formed and they set to the task of shaping and organizing the conference. The SABF was thus born. The group has changed and grown over the years, and for the 2009 edition it has 18 students, none of which were members in the first year. This is a testament to the forums endurance and proof that its mission is a valuable one. The 5th edition of the conference will be held in Buenos Aires on August 7-9 2009. Everything related to the organization of the event, including fundraising, marketing, designing and running the technological applications, helping and advising the students and selecting and inviting the speakers, is done entirely by the 18 students who form the organizing team.

The SABF is designed as a three-day event in which 100 students from around the world are brought together. Each edition has a main topic of discussion, and the students who want to be part of the forum must write an essay based on said topic. The best 100 entries are determined by an independent jury, and their authors invited to attend the conference. This year’s main topic is “New Paradigms, New Challenges”. It makes reference to the world’s volatile and constantly changing economical, social and environmental order. Nowadays we humans are faced with the biggest challenges we have probably ever seen, putting our own existence in threat. Planet Earth, our home, is endangered by the constant degradation that results from our own activities. Moreover, out of the 6 billion people in the world, about half are below the line of poverty and live in devastating conditions. On the economical aspect, symptoms of recession are becoming increasingly evident. All of this is questioning the functioning and viability of our current global system.

To address the aforementioned issues, the students will be able to share their thoughts and ideas with 40 prominent leaders selected for their outstanding experience and background, who are invited to give lectures and participate in workshops and keynote sessions, favoring the discussion and interaction with the students.

Several hundred students coming from backgrounds as diverse as Bangladesh, Liberia and Bolivia have already registered for the 2009 Edition. Completing the application with the written essay is harder to do, and we are aware of it, which is why we provide some guidance on the topics of discussion on our website. Further information can be obtained from the official SABF Blog, a place where constructive discussion of controversial topics is encouraged. Students have time to submit their essay until May 10th 2009.

As a summary, the South American Business Forum is an entirely student-run conference. The fifth edition will take place in Buenos Aires on August 7-9 2009. To attend the congress, students must write an original essay related to the main topic, which is “New Paradigms, New Challenges”. Authors of the best 100 contributions will be invited to attend the forum and have the chance to spend three days in a diverse multi-cultural environment surrounded by the leaders of today and the leaders of tomorrow, discussing and generating new ideas that will allow them to become aware of the possibilities they have to promote positive change.

Original contributions are due by May 10th 2009. Further information can be found on the official site. The Student Relations department is available at all times for any further inquiries you may have. The SABF is a special experience, and taking part in this event that promotes change and progress is both satisfying and unique.

Gulu: St. Monica’s Girls’ School and Assetmap.org

St. Monica’s

A few weeks ago, I spent a few days in Gulu with our team there. We have five girls who are working with a vocational training school that is mostly attended by teenage girls who had been abducted and raped during the war in the North. The school is incredible—it trains several hundred girls in several different vocational disciplines and also has a nursery connected for the girls’ children. The school is run by a group of warm, caring, and quite fun-loving nuns. One of them, Sister Rosemary, was recently profiled as a CNN Hero, but you would never know that she has received so much publicity as she continues to go about her work with a joyful, light-hearted demeanor, never taking herself too seriously. I admire her ability to move forward in response to so much pain in the Gulu community with such a strong sense of joy and good humor—she doesn’t take matters lightly or flippantly, but inspires others with her joy for life in response to challenges.

At the school, our students are currently working with several teachers to design an extracurricular program that would focus on boosting the self-esteem, leadership skills, and peer mediation of the girls. Many of them are incredibly shy, but have seemed to have opened up a bit already with the Northwestern students. When I arrived to see them on a Sunday afternoon, our students were deeply immersed in games with dozens of the youth at the school and seemed to be having a blast! Another focus of the program is on helping the teachers at the school recognize the importance of participatory learning. Much of the educational system in Uganda is based on lectures and rote memorization. Classroom discussions are rare. If received well, the encouragement of participatory learning could be the most important legacy of this program. So far, the teachers have responded well and seem like they might embrace this new paradigm.

Assetmap.org

While I was in Gulu I also got to sit in on some meetings that a fellow GES leader and Engage Uganda alum, Megha Agrawal, had in hopes of starting up a digital asset-mapping website called assetmap.org. The website would compile a list of the community based organizations and non-governmental organizations working in Gulu along with their particular needs and assets. The site’s software would then make connections between the organizations that would help the NGO Forum in Gulu facilitate meaningful coordination. I think the project is a great idea, because hundreds of NGOs work in Gulu, but there is little meaningful coordination. So far, the leaders of the NGO Forum are very excited about the idea and have started explaining it to many of the local organizations. I’m looking forward to seeing how it progresses, as it could be a great tool for multiple levels of development—from local CBOs to interested funders—and in many different cities.

Masaka

Next, I traveled to a small city in Western Uganda called Masaka, where we have our fourth team. That team is working with World Vision to develop a hygiene education program through a group of drama students at a local school. The NU students will work with these older primary school students to develop skits that they can take back to their communities to advocate for better hygiene practices and more latrine building.

Project Profile: Jinja

I wrote the other day that it has been frustrating to not immerse myself in one particular community this summer. While I am still feeling this tension, my short trip to Jinja gave me a glimpse of the benefits of being more mobile.

Our student team in Jinja (which is about a 1.5 hours drive east of Kampala) has been connected through the Foundation for Sustainable Development (FSD) with a local NGO called Organization for Rural Development (ORUDE). After a short region-specific orientation with FSD, the Jinja team was plopped down at ORUDE (which, like GYPA in Kampala, also graciously hosted a student team last summer).

Given the short duration of the students’ stay, they were told that they had to come up with their project proposal by the end of the first week. When I arrived to check in on them on Thursday afternoon, they had just gone through a crash course on ORUDE’s current operations and were debating three possible project ideas that the Director had suggested would be feasible for their time.

ORUDE currently specializes in training farmers in developing agriculture as a business. Most related to the students’ project, ORUDE links up farmers with microfinance institutions (MFIs) and trains them in the borrowing process. Yet, the current set up sees a lot of the wealth generated by micro-lending captured by the MFIs themselves. Furthermore, the MFIs in many ways act like traditional banks and do not offer credit to the poor rural farmers as easily as one might expect from an MFI. Recognizing these issues, ORUDE has hoped for a while that they could help some of the groups of farmers that they work with form a grassroots lending and credit association. The association would be controlled by the farmers, would give out credit easier, and would keep the wealth in the community, hopefully stimulating the economy. The students’ debated for hours whether they could actually add value to such a project, which depends a lot on the current field officers simply moving forward with important planning meetings. After much discussion with the Director, though, they all decided that it makes sense to move forward with this project now, with the students adding value in a couple of ways: They will help ensure the timely progression of the project, help design the necessary systems and structures of the association, and provide an outsiders’ perspective, continually asking clarifying questions throughout the process. While the students do not have a clearly defined role as of yet, they and ORUDE are excited about the chance to move forward with a project that could serve as an important paradigm shift for the organization and community.

For me, the short trip to Jinja was reinvigorating. I loved being able to see a different organization with a completely different focus than GYPA and try to quickly wrap my mind around what they are doing and what would be feasible for the students to attempt in their short stay. It was interesting to watch the students go back and forth with Justin, ORUDE’s Director, thinking through all logical steps that would be required for each project and try to decide how to match up what would be best suited for their particular skills and interests as well as ORUDE’s current capabilities and needs. Personally, I realized that I thoroughly enjoyed sitting alongside of the students, drawing on the limited experience that I do have in project work to help them think through what would best for them and their host organization. Should be good prep for project consulting at the Center for Global Engagement…

Where/how to make an impact? Development as freedom?

As I was coming back from Jinja, I re-entered into a train of thought that bothered me a lot last summer. As much as I am excited about gaining confidence in assessing what works and doesn’t work for a small community based NGO, I’m wrestling more and more with the question of how to really make an impact in the world. I feel a tension between focusing on one community so that I can build strong relationships there and really be part of a grassroots process versus getting involved in overarching legal, technological, or administrative structures that shape how development is done. I doubt I will resolve this tension any time soon, but if you have any thoughts, shoot them my way!

I also just began reading Amartya Sen’s book, Development as Freedom. Though I am not far along, it has helped me to frame both the Kampala and Jinja projects as endeavors focused on breaking down mindsets or structures that serve as limiting “unfreedoms” in peoples’ lives. The projects help to create new mindsets and structures that allow for more freedom for an individual and community—in Kampala, mindsets focused on hope, educational opportunities, and community empowerment; in Jinja, ownership of a lending association that will bring more economic freedom. Maybe Sen’s book will help me to address my previous question of where I (we) can insert ourselves into this complex world…

Ryan Pederson

Center for Global Engagement: Engage Uganda 2008

This summer I am in Uganda for two months, assistant directing the Northwestern University Engage Uganda study abroad program. This program is run by the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern and is in its second year. Last year, I was one of 16 students working in teams of 5-6 for a local NGO. I worked with a team in a Kampalan slum to do basic education programs through soccer. This summer, though, I will not be working on a specific program; instead I’m overseeing the twenty students in four projects that will be going on in four different cities across the country (Kampala, Jinja, Masaka, and Gulu).

Throughout the summer I’ll update you on the progress of the different projects, as well as my general reflections throughout the experience.

Why Engage Uganda?

First, though, I want to take a moment to reflect upon the whole purpose of the Engage Uganda study abroad program. It was designed about two years ago by Global Engagement Summit founders Nathaniel Whittemore and Jon Marino with the idea that students will best learn about how to make change in their world through hands-on work in cultural immersion experiences. As a student last year, I saw this vision become a reality. For the first time in my life, I was able to apply much of what I have learned through the Global Engagement Summit in a local community, establishing both relationships and a project that would continue even after our leaving (and enhanced by our returning this summer). Along the way, I learned many lessons (sometimes the hard way) about cross-cultural communication, team leadership, the politics of humanitarianism, and Ugandan culture, not to mention invaluable insights into the way I personally handle adversity and see myself entering into this complex world of social entrepreneurship and development.

My hope for this summer is that twenty new students will have similarly transformative experiences, and that we will see the beginnings of four successful community development projects.

As I write today, the first week of the students’ work with their host organizations is over. I’ve now been able to see both the Kampala and Jinja teams in action and am very excited about where things are at this summer!

In this entry I’ll profile the Kampala project (unlike the first email J) and reflect upon what it has been like to return to what we did last year. I’ll also talk about what it’s been like on the coordinating side instead of the student side of the program, and what that has led me to wrestle with.

Profile of Kampala Project

The first three days of the week I worked with the student team in Kampala as they have been meeting with the Ugandans who worked on our project last year, as well as several new participants. It has been a thrill to see old friends from last year and be able to reunite, not with a focus on a specific project, but just as friends. Being able to walk through a community, see familiar faces, and reconnect with old friends is helping me (a generally task-oriented person) really start to understand how fundamental relationships are in “development.” It has helped me to see that the relationships that emerged last year were valuable just for the sake of the relationships themselves.

At the same time, it has also been great to hear that much of what we did project-wise last summer continued in one way or another throughout the year. As we walked through the community, many of the kids from last year came to greet us, having remembered our group from the year before and eager to participate in this summer’s project. Several of the older ones were quick to point out that they really saw an impact from last year’s educational program and the series of spin-off projects that followed. Better hygiene, more kids in school, youth more involved in the community, etc. The warm reception and report of continued impact were quite encouraging!

It was even more inspiring to learn that people are excited for what might develop this summer. Last year our project saw the five of us from NU empower 15 Ugandan “peer educators” to help run a 5-week sports and development program that taught about hygiene, HIV-prevention, and several other life skills. This year’s NU team is currently working with a few of the same peer educators as well as several new ones to build upon what happened last year and add a new theater component to the learning process. The fact that we have students returning again makes a big difference and has set the students up well to work with eager partners.

Early in the week the NU team had a meeting with the in-country director of the NGO who emphasized the importance of these types of capacity-building programs. He told the students that a well-designed program can help youth rise out of the downward cycle of despair that often comes from living in poverty and is only made worse when people turn to excessive use of drugs, alcohol, and casual sex. On the broadest level, this year’s project will be focused on helping the youth in the community gain hope that they can realize their potential.

The next day, the NU team assembled a core group of returning and new peer educators to formulate a more intense working group that would be involved in all the important decision-making. After the first meeting, both the American students and Ugandan peer educators were beaming because they made great strides in planning for the upcoming project and were simply excited to be working with one another. I was excited to see several Ugandan friends who were quite reticent last year thriving one year later and taking initiative in the planning process. It gave me a strong sense that what we did last year was successful and that this year only has more potential to develop new youth community leaders. More broadly, I was affirmed in my conviction that one of the most important impacts a group of students can make is to help their Ugandan student counterparts understand their own individual and collective potentials to create change in their community. Returning this summer has shown me just that, and makes me excited when I think of the potential ripple effects of this emerging partnership in Kampala.

Reflections on Coordinating and the Mzungu (White Man) Life Style

As exciting as it has been to return to Uganda as a coordinator, I’m realizing that I very much miss being in the thick of things making a lot of important decisions with a project and being immersed in one community for a summer. At times I have felt very restless. On the flip side, though, it is a good challenge to learn how to ask the right questions that hopefully lead not only to good projects, but also good learning experiences for the students. It was very exciting for me to be able to step back and watch this year’s Kampala team in action and know that they will do a great job on their own. And I am looking forward to bouncing around to several different projects throughout the summer.

As I have neither been working on a specific project nor living with a Ugandan host family, I’ve found myself in many ways living an American life style in a foreign country—meeting with students, writing emails in nice cafes, having nice dinners with the other staff and professors. On one hand, it is a restful and comfortable existence. But on the other hand, as I anticipated, it has been quite frustrating. I dislike teaching students about community development and then returning home to have a guard unlock the gate into our staff’s large ex-colonial mansion. I haven’t decided that we are hypocritical—in some ways, the space is necessary for our group that fluctuates from 5 to 9 people any given night. But the disconnect from the average Ugandans’ experience has been frustrating for me when I am hoping to take a step outside of my comfort zone this summer. It has resurrected in me a passion for more incarnational community development, living IN the community where I am working. It will be interesting for me to see how this tension resolves itself or grows throughout the summer. More updates coming soon…

Ryan Pederson

Want to support a really amazing project with a positive impact on the global community?

NorthwesternUniversity's student group Engineers for a Sustainable World is making a difference by collaborating with the isolated community of Santo Domingo, Panama to provide families with electricity generated by solar panels.  We will train and equip community members to install and maintain solar panel systems in the 14 households that comprise their core community.

www.GlobalGiving.com is a website where donors can view different development and aid projects and donate to their favorite ones.  From April 24-May 13, 2008, our Panama Solar Power project is participating in a contest to fundraise for our project on GlobalGiving and possibly earn a permanent spot on the site.

We need your support—every little bit makes a difference!

Please visit the site at http://www.globalgiving.com/pr/2100/proj2066a.html.

Thank you!
Bethany Summersgill and Richard Zheng, project managers
Questions? Contact Bethany at bds@u.northwestern.edu

I was extremely fortunate to participate in this year’s Global Engagement Summit. The conference brought 60 students from nearly 40 countries to Northwestern University for a long weekend to take a critical and energizing look at their altruistic ambitions. Delegates were encourage them to discuss their ideas, learn techniques from some established non-profit, business, and NGO leaders and to leave the summit with a better understanding of how they plan to accomplish their goals.

Having been peripherally involved in GES (formerly the International Youth Volunteerism Summit) for the past three years, it is particularly interesting to see the new ways in which the Internet is being used to put projects into action. Before the summit was over, many of the delegates had organized themselves into an online alumni group so that, despite global geographic divide, they will be able to stay in close touch. Delegates, who are required to the conference with projects (at varying stages) in development, are anxious to figure out how to best make the Internet work for them in their overall efforts. This year it was difficult to run into someone who had not somehow integrated web-based techniques into the execution of their plans.

From Alec Ross from the One Economy Corporation sharing insight on his efforts to bridge the digital divide to Christine Arnold of Prevent Human Trafficking talking about taking aim at human slavery and exploitation, participants were given great opportunities to hear from ambitious and awe-inspiring professionals who are making something happen both on the web and on the ground.

I admit it. I came to Uganda last month with a lot of fears. Would I be able to really accomplish anything meaningful? Was I doing the right thing? Would I lose touch with family and friends in ways not easily repaired? These fears were compounded by the fact that I was leaving such exciting projects like helping to build the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern.

But, nonetheless, I left.

On April 1, I began a year long research project to explore how residents of Northern Uganda are rebuilding communities after two decades of displacement, and how government and international actors are aiding in this process.

I would argue that my fears are common to young people venturing off into the world in pursuit of real relationships and positive change across cultural boundaries. When you're truly honest with yourself, I think you'll agree.

Fortunately, my GES community is alive and well in Uganda and has—to a great degree—helped me make the transition to life here.

There is Halle, the founder of One Mango Tree and former GES delegate that lives across the hall from me in my flat. There are the Resolve Uganda guys that I met at GES as workshop facilitators—Michael, Peter, and Stephen—that provide research and simple living advice through regular email contact. And the list goes on…

To some extent, its sad and surreal for me to know that you're all there enjoying a powerful and productive summit while I'm an ocean away. But, we all have our own stories to write, and my current chapter unfolds in Uganda.

As you soak in the amazing-ness that is GES2008, find comfort in the fact that the GES community you're now a part of will be there when you depart for the place where your next life-chapter unfolds.

jon looking incredulously as he prepares to dig into some delicious Matoke and Boo