We had a wonderful time celebrating Cohort 8's achievements at their Graduation Event on Wednesday 13th March 2019 and were so pleased that so many people (including ambassadors, heads of the university, NGOs, families, friends, students) could join us from near and far!
Hearing some of our students give Ted Talk presentations was a great way to hear about their internships in Namibia, Nepal, Sierra Leone, Ecuador and Northern Greece. It was inspiring to hear them speak and we look forward to seeing what they achieve after Glocal.
The roundtable discussions, led by our students, provided an opportunity for our guests to explore our students' passions and explore what they have been studying throughout their time at Glocal. Topics discussed in the roundtable discussions included 'Ethics of Development', 'the role of humanitarian organizations in shaping representation of aid recipients', 'gender and development' and 'youth and development' amongst others!
Our keynote speaker, Glocal Alumna Rina Kedem who is a social-environmental entrepreneur and project manager for environmental and community-based development, gave an insightful talk on 'Community Development in the Field: An Exploration of Transboundary Cooperation'. It was a real pleasure to hear Rina speak.
Students also prepared a fantastic display of postcards which represented the theme of their event: the ABCs of development. Throughout students' time at Glocal, they learnt many theoretical and practical approaches to development work. One that particularly resonated with their cohort was Asset Based Community Development - commonly referred to as ABCD - which suggests forming sustainable development strategies for communities based on their known and potential assets and strengths, rather than their needs. The students of Cohort 8 chose to use this memorable acronym to expand the alphabet of development, each choosing a letter and a word that highlights one dimension of the field in order to convey a bigger picture of the nuances of development as we view it today. The ABCs are incredibly simple and one of the first things we learn as children, whilst development theory and practice is quite the opposite. The students chose to present this in the form of postcards, with the hope of creating a space of engagement and accessibility.