Commentary: A new program shifts the concept of philanthropy
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| Published on Tuesday, July 29, 2008 |
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By Jean H Charles and Jackie Bondanza
There are few places where poverty and privilege are more intimately juxtaposed than New York City. In a place saturated with wealth and power, Fortune 500 companies, and $10 million Park Ave. penthouses, there exists an intricate underground world filled with people who can’t afford breakfast. It’s a complex parallel existence between the elites and the ineligibles.
It’s no wonder non-profit consultancy organization Globalhood chose New York City to launch an innovative new program called Global Potential, a project that facilitates international community development to promote social change. Founded by activist and social entrepreneur Frank Cohn, Globalhood is a unique organization that aims to serve as the middleman between aid organizations, like the UN and the World Bank, and beneficiaries of the aid. The organization is comprised of international leaders, philanthropists, activists, social workers, Peace Corp members, and business elites, enabling the organization to take a multidisciplinary approach to projects, programs, and concepts. By homing in on every dimension of a project’s needs, the organization achieves great success in implementing programs that not only benefit the people they’re meant to benefit, but provides stimulation and skills to truly instigate permanent change.
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| Jean H Charles MSW, JD is Executive Director of AINDOH Inc a non profit organization dedicated to build a kinder and gentle Caribbean zone for all. He can be reached at: jeanhcharles@aol.com |
Cohn founded the organization to fill an important void in the world aid system -- one that results from the failure to assess the sociological, economical, and political needs and struggles of a particular area, as well as its long-term needs. The lack of attention to this pertinent component of solving world issues is largely to blame for the $2.3 trillion dollars the United States has spent in the past few decades to “end poverty.” Poverty, it seems, has been less than impressed.
Cohn saw an opportunity to conceptualize a new, fresh approach to world aid and cultivated a community of scholars, activists, and educators across dozens of ethnic and class borders. The organization’s mission is to stimulate positive socio-economic change for underserved populations in foreign countries and right here in our own neighborhoods. Instead of raising funds and donating money to poverty-stricken areas, Globalhood seeks collaborative programs in which each community helps the next.
Enter Global Potential. The program was initiated to target low-income, at-risk youth and stimulate them to make positive change in their lives through doing so for others. The program was launched in 2006 in collaboration with a number of international corporations and educational institutions, including Columbia University, who has jumped on board by offering graduate students in their social work school the opportunity to mentor the populations involved in the project through an internship.
Working closely with the International High School at Prospect Heights in Brooklyn, GP has chosen a group of ten underserved, at-risk high school students to participate in the program. The students spent nearly six months in challenging vocational and leadership training, and through mentors have developed communication, problem solving, and empowerment tools. The students, along with their mentors and program organizers, are preparing to travel to the rural community of Batey 8 in the Dominican Republic to share their newly learned skills with Batey 8 community members. They’ll spend six weeks living in the community, where the majority of the population is illiterate and makes less than $47 a month.
Upon returning home, the students will use their skills and broadened understanding of the world to take action in their own communities, and to better their own lives with the use of structured social entrepreneurship models. The students have also been encouraged to create and implement their own ideas for improving society. They’ll be given the opportunity to continue studying with their mentor, and their success in achieving their personal and program-driven goals will be monitored and evaluated.
The ten students have already seen significant growth, says Cohn, by simply realizing their potential to help others. “By participating in this program, I hope to learn more about myself,” says Fanelia, one of the 10 students involved with the program. She adds, “Helping others gives me power over my own life.” This is exactly the concept that Global Potential has hoped to help students realize.
The program is only one of a handful like it around the world that focuses on international development through travel and the amalgamation of similar communities. “We are also the only such program that focuses on long-term employment outcomes and social entrepreneurship. Our pilot project is particularly unique in that we are taking youth primarily of Haitian and Dominican origin to a community in the Dominican Republic that is primarily Haitian -- this is sure to be a transformative cultural experience for all involved,” says Cohn.
By connecting two communities with similar social and economic profiles, Global Potential aims to stimulate growth and positive change from peers, and not from authorities. Global Potential rides on the philosophy that teaching people to develop skills and incentive is much more fruitful in the long run than simply providing funds. Why give a man a fish instead of teaching him how to catch it himself? Global Potential takes the concept a step further. “We are recognizing that in order to truly bring about change, we have to find ways to give the fisherman the opportunity to teach someone else to fish,” explains Cohn.
The program creates more than a fostered understanding of each other and the world around us; it stimulates students to develop theories outside of their own natural paradigm of conceptualization. This, in turn, encourages students to become citizens of the world. In this sense, Global Potential serves as a catalyst for change, a bridge to creating unity and appreciation for something bigger. “By giving youth the opportunity to travel and help an impoverished rural community, we are inciting leadership and collaboration that will bring about real, lasting change,” says Cohn.
The Global Potential concept has caught the ears of dozens of social organizations and schools around the world, who are eager to become part of this exciting new program. Globalhood plans to expand the program every year, with the intention that the concept will nurture the potential in every person to change the world.
Paulo Freire, an educational activist and scholar, brought to light the concept of liberation from poverty and illiteracy through peer-to-peer education as opposed to authoritative governance during his lifetime of educational revolution and advocacy. As Freire says, “Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information.”
Global Potential is, in the purest form, what Freire always dreamed possible.
Note: Global Potential is still fundraising for its July trip. To find out more about Global Potential and to donate, visit www.Global-Potential.org | | | | Reads : 776 | | | |
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