Lucia Difranco (GECP 2020)
Last summer, GECPer Lucia Difranco worked as a student leader at the Global Youth Advancement Summit which brought together over 200 youth leaders from around the world to exchange ideas and inspiration as well as galvanize efforts to address complex global challenges.
I wanted to fill you in on my experience at the Global Youth Advancement Summit! It was such a wonderful event and so amazing to see so many people helping to fight global inequity in their communities. The delegates all presented about their solutions/ideas to help solve global inequity. These presentations were done through workshops, Ted-style talks, case studies, poster presentations, and panel discussions.
The delegates solutions focused on one of the 5 major categories: Education, livelihoods, healthcare, environment, arts and culture. Being a GECPer, OBVIOUSLY education was a topic I was naturally drawn to. There were so many great ideas and solutions that were discussed as it related to inequity and education. One presenter from Morocco presented about her company, The Dar Taliba Program, which is an education program that enables girls from rural and remote areas of the country to learn English and increase the educational outcomes for rural Moroccan girls. This was so amazing to hear about this company and the impactful steps being made to bridge the gap of educated girls in Morocco.
A lot of the solutions the delegates came up with had to do with technology, which I thought was very innovative and made a lot of sense (being in this digital age). One project I thought was cool was this company in Ghana that provided a tutoring service that could be excessed through text messages. TEXT MESSAGES! The company is called Eneza Education and its target audience for this service is for students living in rural Ghana who needed extra tutoring on certain subjects, or who were just interested in learning more about a topic. Today, they have had over 2 million people use their services. THAT’S AMAZING!! It was so great to get to talk and engage with so many different people who are driven and passionate in achieving the same goal.
Excited to engage with youth leaders around global action? Reach out to Lucia to learn more or check out the Global Youth Advancement Network homepage.