The Global Leadership Institute (GLI) is a program through Taft that partners students from Taft with students from Waterbury public schools. The set of 12 partners works to solve global issues locally, with this multi-step project culminating in a presentation at the end of their junior year. Students apply during the fall of their sophomore year, and those accepted begin work in the winter. A year and a half might seem like a long time for what seems ostensibly like community service, but I can speak from experience that the time truly flies by, and it is a lot more than a small extension of non ut sibi. Students here often feel like they are pressed for time, and adding in extracurriculars can feel exhausting, even when it is something you are passionate about.
I felt this way merely a few weeks into my GLI cohort experience. At the same time, however, I felt extremely excited about what the next year and a half would allow me to do. From going to the United Nations, working diligently to find sources for annotated bibliographies, and enjoying pizza on our Monday night meetings with our Waterbury peers, GLI was an experience that taught me a lot more than what I learned from my chosen topic: enhancing quality of life through providing resources to citizens. While that may sound clunky and vague, as do many of the other project titles, presentation night allowed all of us to step outside of the 18-month bubble we had spent immersed in our specific projects and learn extensively about what our peers worked on.
To give some more context, GLI scholars are paired intentionally by the directors of the program, our very own Mrs. Foley and Ms. Santos, based on the interests we express and the internships we complete. The first part of the GLI process is to secure and participate in a summer internship before returning to campus as an Upper Mid. Many of us may have had an idea of what we wanted our projects to be, but we did not choose them yet. This allowed us to engage in internships and summer work that was not constrained by a specific topic. However, those internships still proved valuable and necessary for the work we conducted once we were paired and topics were chosen. From working in a pathology lab, volunteering in churches, or spending time with incarcerated persons, the internships informed our abilities to work professionally, efficiently, and to comprehend the importance of working towards something bigger than ourselves.
The following eight months involved us working with our partners to meet “actionables” (direct and engaged action helping us meet our project goals). Every actionable looked different for different groups. Some were consistent, weekly or monthly meetings with organizations. Others were surveys or more dispersed events. Every group’s approach matched their vision, and when it didn’t, we learned to adapt. A big part of GLI is facing adversity, and facing the frustration of different schedules, different ideas, and different outcomes. This embracing of “different” allowed all of us on presentation night to feel the specific satisfaction of working through real challenges. It also allowed us to see what a community really looks like.
No two of the 24 Taft and Waterbury students were alike, and our amalgamation of habits, personalities, and perspectives is merely a sample size of what global engagement can look like locally.
Photo courtesy of Robert Falcetti
