Seattle Program > Social Justice & Education > Leadership

Every aspect of the GV Leadership Program is designed for students to build leadership skills that they can use at their school, with their families, at work, and, eventually, in college and in their future career. The year-long program gives students the tools to make the most out of their cultural immersion opportunity in Guatemala. The preparation prior to the trip and follow-up after help students place their experiences within a larger context and make personal decisions about how they want to live their life based on those experiences.

Skills and leadership opportunities gained through:

• Time management
• Public speaking/presenting to their peers
• Communication skills
• Office organizational skills
• Learning about how non-profit organizations are run

• How to set and reach goals
• Organizational skills
• Public speaking/presentations
• How to ask individuals and businesses for donations
• Self-discipline and time management
• How to self-advocate

• Responsibility for retreat facilities and group meals
• Giving directions to other students
• Taking ownership for one's own learning

• Second language acquisition
• Putting group first and me second
• Being a leader of the day at least one day of the trip
• Responsibility to answer students' logistical questions
• Giving directions to other students
• Helping keep the group safe
• Following through with assigned jobs
• Stepping out of your comfort zone

• Workshops about where do I go from here and taking leadership in one's lifestyle, career and building a lifelong ethic of service to one's community

There are many kinds of leadership; students explore assumptions made in our own culture and learn the many styles that other cultures value, and in turn, grow to appreciate the diverse range of leadership styles our diverse student cohorts bring to the program. Henceforth, GV has developed a series of three programs which target very specifically the competencies we feel are essential to achieve leadership.

1. Youth capacity building refers to the practice of developing the skills and potential of youth to take the lead in their own development and the development of their communities by enhancing their expertise and awareness about relevant issues and their community, such as youth training on cultural diversity.*

1. Develop cross-cultural competency and literacy
2. Address racism and other unfair behaviors at all levels of society through Pro-Justice and diversity trainings;
3. Develop philanthropic leadership by determining a philanthropic goal, getting training and following through on fundraising.
4. Increase ecological footprint awareness and reduction
5. Discuss global issues (economics, history, politics) and their solutions (micro-lending, organic farming, local economies, sustainability)
6. Build communication skills (presentation, professional, sales, and interpersonal)
7. Reinforce second language skills

2. Youth participation addresses the ability of children and youth to actively participate in community, local, and national institutions, and to encourage youth to tackle social, cultural, and economic barriers to civic and democratic participation. Effective civic participation of youth strengthens institutions and empowers youth to be leaders within their communities.*

1. Participate on a local Seattle volunteer and on an international volunteer team
2. Spend up to 200 hours in Guatemala for language and cultural immersion
3. Lead philanthropic effort by raising money to meet a goal.
4. Steward environmental issues through habitat protection and reforestation locally and in Guatemala.
5. Re-direct energy, time and resources in domains of self, family, community, world.

3. Youth leadership addresses the ability of youths to not only participate in, but initiate and create a variety of programs for younger youths, while encapsulating the many notions of social and environmental progress they learned throughout the previous years. Those programs are founded, organized, and operated by the Leaders in Training and the Youth Board, essentially becoming subsidiaries of Global Visionaries, under the umbrella of the parent organization.

1. Organize retreats, events, culture nights, fundraising
2. Facilitate program for first year participants
3. Program and Lead work teams
4. Plan and structure the GAP year with specific programs within NGO or Environmentalists organizations
5. Participate in GV organization wide strategic planning
6. Create micro-lending programs

The Global Visionaries curriculum requires that participants understand the complexity of overlapping systems (ecological, political, social, cultural, food, water) and most importantly, their roles and responsibilities in each of these systems. A few examples:

• GV participants, as they build new classrooms onto the only school in a rural village in Guatemala, realize that education and schools are not taken for granted.
• They learn to value the diversity of the natural environment by protecting local habitat and planting 4,000 trees annually in deforested regions.
• They discover that each dollar they spend has a direct affect on people - the very people they meet and work with and become friends with in Guatemala. Their purchases can increase or decrease the sustainability of local cultures and eco-systems.

In sum, our mission is to enable students to understand fully the totality of personal responsibility for one's actions and that, through the program, to quote Gandhi, they can become the change they want to see in the world.