essay about global community

Global Citizenship Curriculum Project - Georgetown University

• Course Module
• Global Dialogues

Dalai Lama, The Global Community and the Need for Global Responsibility (2002) [excerpts]

As the twenty-first century starts, we find that the world has grown smaller and the world's people have become almost one community. Political and military alliances have created large multinational groups, industry and international trade have produced a global economy, and worldwide communications are eliminating ancient barriers of distance, language and race. We are also being drawn together by the grave problems we face: overpopulation, dwindling natural resources, and an environmental crisis that threatens our air, water, and trees, along with the vast number of beautiful life forms that are the very foundation of existence on this small planet we share.

I believe that to meet the challenge of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not just for his or her own self, family or nation, but for the benefit of all mankind. Universal responsibility is the real key to human survival. It is the best foundation for world peace, the equitable use of natural resources, and through concern for future generations, the proper care of the environment.

For some time, I have been thinking about how to increase our sense of mutual responsibility and the altruistic motive from which it derives. Briefly, I would like to offer my thoughts.

One Human Family

Whether we like it or not, we have all been born on this earth as part of one great human family. Rich or poor, educated or uneducated, belonging to one nation or another, to one religion or another, adhering to this ideology or that, ultimately each of us is just a human being like everyone else: we all desire happiness and do not want suffering. Furthermore, each of us has an equal right to pursue these goals.

Today's world requires that we accept the oneness of humanity. In the past, isolated communities could afford to think of one another as fundamentally separate and even existed in total isolation. Nowadays, however, events in one part of the world eventually affect the entire planet. Therefore we have to treat each major local problem as a global concern from the moment it begins. We can no longer invoke the national, racial or ideological barriers that separate us without destructive repercussions. In the context of our new interdependence, considering the interests of others is clearly the best form of self-interest.

I view this fact as a source of hope. The necessity for cooperation can only strengthen mankind, because it helps us recognize that the most secure foundation for the new world order is not simply broader political and economic alliances, but rather each individual's genuine practice of love and compassion. For a better, happier, more stable and civilized future, each of us must develop a sincere, warm-hearted feeling of brother- and sisterhood.

The Medicine of Altruism

In Tibet we say that many illnesses can be cured by the one medicine of love and compassion. These qualities are the ultimate source of human happiness, and our need for them lies at the very core of our being. Unfortunately, love and compassion have been omitted from too many spheres of social interaction for too long. Usually confined to family and home, their practice in public life is considered impractical, even naive. This is tragic. In my view, the practice of compassion is not just a symptom of unrealistic idealism but the most effective way to pursue the best interests of others as well as our own. The more we - as a nation, a group or as individuals - depend upon others, the more it is in our own best interests to ensure their well-being.

Practicing altruism is the real source of compromise and cooperation; merely recognizing our need for harmony is not enough. A mind committed to compassion is like an overflowing reservoir - a constant source of energy, determination and kindness. This mind is like a seed; when cultivated, it gives rise to many other good qualities, such as forgiveness, tolerance, inner strength and the confidence to overcome fear and insecurity. The compassionate mind is like an elixir; it is capable of transforming bad situations into beneficial ones. Therefore, we should not limit our expressions of love and compassion to our family and friends. Nor is compassion only the responsibility of clergy, health care and social workers. It is the necessary business of every part of the human community.

Whether a conflict lies in the field of politics, business or religion, an altruistic approach is frequently the sole means of resolving it. Sometimes the very concepts we use to mediate a dispute are themselves the cause of the problem. At such times, when a resolution seems impossible, both sides should recall the basic human nature that unites them. This will help break the impasse and, in the long run, make it easier for everyone to attain their goal. Although neither side may be fully satisfied, if both make concessions, at the very least, the danger of further conflict will be averted. We all know that this form of compromise is the most effective way of solving problems - why, then, do we not use it more often?

When I consider the lack of cooperation in human society, I can only conclude that it stems from ignorance of our interdependent nature. I am often moved by the example of small insects, such as bees. The laws of nature dictate that bees work together in order to survive. As a result, they possess an instinctive sense of social responsibility. They have no constitution, laws, police, religion or moral training, but because of their nature they labor faithfully together. Occasionally they may fight, but in general the whole colony survives on the basis of cooperation. Human beings, on the other hand, have constitutions, vast legal systems and police forces; we have religion, remarkable intelligence and a heart with a great capacity to love. But despite our many extraordinary qualities, in actual practice we lag behind those small insects; in some ways, I feel we are poorer than the bees.

For instance, millions of people live together in large cities all over the world, but despite this proximity, many are lonely. Some do not have even one human being with whom to share their deepest feelings, and live in a state of perpetual agitation. This is very sad. We are not solitary animals that associate only in order to mate. If we were, why would we build large cities and towns? But even though we are social animals compelled to live together, unfortunately, we lack a sense of responsibility towards our fellow humans. Does the fault lie in our social architecture - the basic structures of family and community that support our society? Is it in our external facilities - our machines, science and technology? I do not think so.

I believe that despite the rapid advances made by civilization in this century, the most immediate cause of our present dilemma is our undue emphasis on material development alone. We have become so engrossed in its pursuit that, without even knowing it, we have neglected to foster the most basic human needs of love, kindness, cooperation and caring. If we do not know someone or find another reason for not feeling connected with a particular individual or group, we simply ignore them. But the development of human society is based entirely on people helping each other. Once we have lost the essential humanity that is our foundation, what is the point of pursuing only material improvement?

To me, it is clear: a genuine sense of responsibility can result only if we develop compassion. Only a spontaneous feeling of empathy for others can really motivate us to act on their behalf. [...]

Universal Responsibility

[…] In our present circumstances, none of us can afford to assume that somebody else will solve our problems; each of us must take his or her own share of universal responsibility. In this way, as the number of concerned, responsible individuals grows, tens, hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of such people will greatly improve the general atmosphere. Positive change does not come quickly and demands ongoing effort. If we become discouraged we may not attain even the simplest goals. With constant, determined application, we can accomplish even the most difficult objectives.

Adopting an attitude of universal responsibility is essentially a personal matter. The real test of compassion is not what we say in abstract discussions but how we conduct ourselves in daily life. Still, certain fundamental views are basic to the practice of altruism.

Though no system of government is perfect, democracy is that which is closest to humanity's essential nature. Hence those of us who enjoy it must continue to fight for all peoples' right to do so. Furthermore, democracy is the only stable foundation upon which a global political structure can be built. To work as one, we must respect the right of all peoples and nations to maintain their own distinctive character and values.

In particular, a tremendous effort will be required to bring compassion into the realm of international business. Economic inequality, especially that between developed and developing nations, remains the greatest source of suffering on this planet.[...]

We also need to renew our commitment to human values in the field of modern science. Though the main purpose of science is to learn more about reality, another of its goals is to improve the quality of life. Without altruistic motivation, scientists cannot distinguish between beneficial technologies and the merely expedient...

Nor are the religions of the world exempt from this responsibility. The purpose of religion is not to build beautiful churches or temples, but to cultivate positive human qualities such as tolerance, generosity and love. Every world religion, no matter what its philosophical view, is founded first and foremost on the precept that we must reduce our selfishness and serve others. Unfortunately, sometimes religion itself causes more quarrels than it solves. Practitioners of different faiths should realize that each religious tradition has immense intrinsic value and the means for providing mental and spiritual health. One religion, like a single type of food, cannot satisfy everybody. [...]

Certainly, the most important field in which to sow the seeds of greater altruism is international relations. In the past few years the world has changed dramatically. I think we would all agree that the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have ushered in a new historical era. As we moved through the past it would seem that human experience has come full circle.[...]

I have not included the United Nations in this discussion of the present era because both its critical role in helping create a better world and its great potential for doing so are so well known. By definition, the United Nations must be in the very middle of whatever major changes occur. However, it may need to amend its structure for the future. I have always had the greatest hopes for the United Nations, and with no criticism intended, I would like simply to point out that the post-World War II climate under which its charter was conceived has changed. With that change has come the opportunity to further democratize the UN, especially the somewhat exclusive Security Council with its five permanent members, which should be made more representative.

I would like to conclude by stating that, in general, I feel optimistic about the future. Some recent trends portend our great potential for a better world. As late as the fifties and sixties, people believed that war was an inevitable condition of mankind. The Cold War, in particular, reinforced the notion that opposing political systems could only clash, not compete or even collaborate. Few now hold this view. Today, people all over the planet are genuinely concerned about world peace. They are far less interested in propounding ideology and far more committed to coexistence. These are very positive developments.

Also, for thousands of years people believed that only an authoritarian organization employing rigid disciplinary methods could govern human society. However, people have an innate desire for freedom and democracy, and these two forces have been in conflict. Today, it is clear which has won. The emergence of nonviolent "people's power" movements have shown indisputably that the human race can neither tolerate nor function properly under the rule of tyranny. This recognition represents remarkable progress...

I think we can say that, because of the lessons we have begun to learn, this century will be friendlier, more harmonious, and less harmful. Compassion, the seed of peace, will be able to flourish. I am very hopeful. At the same time, I believe that every individual has a responsibility to help guide our global family in the right direction. Good wishes alone are not enough; we have to assume responsibility. Large human movements spring from individual human initiatives. If you feel that you cannot have much of an effect, the next person may also become discouraged and a great opportunity will have been lost. On the other hand, each of us can inspire others simply by working to develop our own altruistic motivation.

I am sure that many honest, sincere people all over the world already hold the views that I have mentioned here. Unfortunately, nobody listens to them. Although my voice may go unheeded as well, I thought that I should try to speak on their behalf. Of course, some people may feel that it is very presumptuous for the Dalai Lama to write in this way. But, since I received the Nobel Peace Prize, I feel I have a responsibility to do so. If I just took the Nobel money and spent it however I liked, it would look as if the only reason I had spoken all those nice words in the past was to get this prize! However, now that I have received it, I must repay the honor by continuing to advocate the views that I have always expressed.

I, for one, truly believe that individuals can make a difference in society. Since periods of great change such as the present one come so rarely in human history, it is up to each of us to make the best use of our time to help create a happier world.

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Global Community and Human Rights Essay

The development of a global community holds a lot of promise for the improvement of human rights. The basis for such a community is mutual understanding among different countries people groups and an increasing sense of universal responsibility towards all members. This is attainable by implementing a common code of human rights across the globe along the lines of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The declaration’s development was consultative and was not the product of any one nation but that of the United Nations member states hence it promises to provide the binding code required to define international human relations without raising the fear of cultural imperialism.

A community comprises several members who share certain characteristics in their way of life. It is one where members have “interests and concerns that go beyond national interests and concerns” (Iriye 6).The elements shared vary and may include values, resources, geographical space, and challenges, among others.

For a community to be global, it requires to have certain elements that do not limit its existence to particular pockets of humanity. This includes geographical spread, universal values, and shared aspirations among its membership. It should have the capacity to act universally, and to have its effects and influence felt across the world. Since the advent of the internet, the concept of a global community has gained much currency as the internet reduces the gap created by spatial barriers.

People from all over the world participate in global forums and participate in internet activity creating the ground for truly global communities. Social media platforms led by Facebook present some of the largest global communities where social media users interact to share their thoughts, hopes, and aspirations.

One of the expressions of shared values in the global community is human rights. Human rights are certain entitlements to any human being simply by virtue of being human. The United Nations defined human rights applicable to all people on earth to all member countries. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights lists the agreed upon standards in a set of thirty articles.

The declaration speaks of a human brotherhood and aims at creating a world where human beings relate in an equal fashion, with access to opportunities to acquire basic resources for life, along with dignity and respect. This document is an excellent basis for the development of a global community, where human rights form part of the universal values upheld by all members. They provide an equalizing platform for all people. Donnelly observes, “Human rights are equal rights” (10).

It is not accurate to regard human rights as a form of cultural imperialism. This is because no one imposes these rights on anyone else in themselves, but a stronger community may use advocacy for the respect of human rights as a means of subjugating other cultures. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights arose through consensus.

No one imposed the declaration on the member countries of the United Nations. However, their application provides opportunities for cultural imperialism since not all countries respect these rights. When nations insist that they will only relate with countries that respect these rights, the result is cultural imperialism. The Declaration represents the sum total of the best values that different human communities identify as elementary for the decent relations of men.

No one member of the global community can lay claim to the development and propagation of these rights in isolation. Rather, all of humanity has a contribution and hence a stake in them. While they remain open to abuse by superior powers to exploit and manipulate weaker nations, they do not form a basis for the subjugation of nations or in any way contribute to cultural imperialism.

In the journey towards a global community, culture, power, and politics are strong forces that influence the development of a global sense of belonging. Powerful nations do not like to take responsibility for their actions on the behest of other nations, and as such, they tend to resist efforts that may make them equal members of the global community.

A case in point is the United States, which generally resist global efforts aimed at creating some form of supranational legislation seen to impinge on its sovereignty. It is not a signatory to the Rome statute, and as a result, the International Criminal Court has acquired the image of a court that serves failed states. If powerful countries such as the United States were signatories, it would have provided the court with a much stronger sense of authority in the execution of its mandate.

Culture is a force to reckon with in the development of a global community. China has a unique culture that for centuries has been inward looking. Until recently, China has kept its affairs to itself. As it has begun seeking to relate more strongly with other countries, its foreign policy continues to reflect their cultural disposition.

It does not interfere with the internal politics of its trading partners, and does not use human rights record of any country as a prerequisite for establishment of trading relations. Political considerations also influence the development of global communities. When the United Kingdom voted against joining the Eurozone, political considerations informed the taking of this decision.

There are two key influences of nationalism in a global community. Nationalism would appear like a strong divisive force interfering with the harmonious relations of nations when nations aggressively seek to assert their identity and values in the international platform. It may be what stops the emergence of true universal brother-hood.

On the second count, it will appear as the basis for a global community. Taking pride in one’s nation qualifies one to be a responsible member of the global community, much in the same way as belonging to a proud family prepares one for effective engagement with the local community.

With a widespread global worldview, there is bound to be some change in the perception of other people within the global community. Recognizing that all humans are essentially related and are interdependent on each other would create a world where international responsibilities have a greater appeal to all persons.

This will reduce competition for resources and improve collaboration between different nations in social, economic, and political endeavors. The fields of education, health, and science would benefit immensely from this.

There will be improved respect for human rights across the globe since all persons will see their role in the world and will feel responsible toward the general goodwill of humanity. There will be a greater chance of closing up gaps in international treaties relating to the environment, and countries with poor human right records will find much compulsion to improve their human rights records to become fitting members of the global community.

Culture is essentially a product of environment, with adaptation to living conditions as the guiding force in its development. There are elements of culture that will continue to be unique in a global community because different peoples adapt differently to their living conditions. However, the areas of commonality will increase.

Cultural values will grow closer to each other right across the global community. A case in point is the United Republic of Tanzania. After her colonization by the Germans and later the British, the country attained independence and thereafter pursued a policy of ‘ujamaa’, a Swahili word meaning brother-hood.

The colonial boundaries brought together different people groups with different cultures who have since amalgamated into a largely unified people. Certain cultural elements remain distinct from one tribe to another. Overall, there has emerged a truly Tanzanian culture with certain values such as hospitality and common courtesy.

This is a possible result worldwide propelled by the emergence of a global community. If this took place, the interpretation of human rights will be universal and hence there will be much progress in the field of human rights right across the world. A respect for human rights would underpin the new global culture. After all, Orend reminds us, human rights “are values committing us to treating each other in ways we think we all deserve” (19).

The prospects for the emergence of a global community grow everyday with the threats to it. There is a higher degree of connectivity between different peoples across the earth facilitated by the emergence and growth of the internet. In the field of human rights, different types of human rights groups have emerged.

They are heavily involved in championing for the rights of marginalized. There is an increased awareness of human rights issues in many countries especially those that have poor records. The sense of shared humanity literally pervades all sectors of the human experience. The emergence of a global community will depend on the handling of these elements. It will also depend on whether the forces driving this development will find encouragement and deliberate direction from authorities.

Works Cited

Donnelly, Jack. Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice . New York: Cornell University Press, 2003. Print.

Iriye, Akira. Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in Making of the Contemporary World . London: University of California Press, 2003. Print.

Orend, Brian. Human Rights: Concept and Context . Ontario: Broadview Press, 2002. Print.

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Bibliography

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What Does it Mean to be a Global Citizen?

By Ron Israel and the Global Citizen’s Initiative

UPDATED 10/9/18

There is an emerging world community to which we all belong!

The growing interconnectedness among people, countries, and economies means that there is a global dimension to who we are. The most positive way of responding to this is by pursuing a path of global citizenship. Global citizens see ourselves as part of an emerging world community, and are committed to helping build this community’s values and practices.

Here are 10 Steps that you can take if you are interested in becoming a global citizen.

Step 1.  RECOGNIZE THE GLOBAL PART OF WHO YOU ARE:  All of our lives have become globalized; whether through the Internet, the way in which we’re impacted by the global economy; our desire to provide humanitarian assistance to disaster victims in countries other than our own; or even in our love of world art, music, food, and travel. We all have a part of us that is global. Examine your own life, recognize its global dimension, and reflect on how that affects your view of the world.

Step 2.  EXPAND YOUR DEFINITION OF COMMUNITY:  Because of the many ways in which countries and people are now so interconnected, we all are now part of an emerging world community. This doesn’t mean that we have to give up being a member of other communities, e.g., our town, our country, our ethnicity. It means that we have another community—the world community—to which we now belong. Find ways to celebrate your connection to this community.

Step 3.  DISCOVER THE VALUES OF THE WORLD COMMUNITY:  Every community needs to have values, and the world community is no exception to this rule. The values of the world community reflect the moral ideals that most of us believe in as the basis for human existence; for example human rights, religious pluralism, participatory governance, protection of the environment, poverty reduction, sustainable economic growth, elimination of weapons of mass destruction, prevention and cessation of conflict between countries, humanitarian assistance, and the preservation of the world’s cultural diversity. Take stock of your belief in these values. Are you aware of ways in which the world as a whole is trying to live by them?

Step 5.  ENGAGE WITH THE ORGANIZATIONS THAT ARE TRYING TO GOVERN THE WORLD:   As a global citizen you should try and build awareness about the different organizations, which are making the policies shaping our world community. These organizations include international agencies, like the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund, legal tribunals like the World Court and the International Criminal Court, international professional associations like the The International Federation of Accountants or the International Civil Aviation Organization, and transnational corporations like Starbucks, Hindustan Lever, and Smith/Kline/Glaxo. Try to learn about and engage with these organizations and make sure that they are operating in accordance with the values we perceive to be important.

Step 6.  PARTICIPATE IN AN ADVOCACY EFFORT FOR GLOBAL CHANGE:   Sign petitions, join demonstrations, contribute funds, and explore other ways of advocating for global change. As global citizens we need to join together to express the fact that people across the planet share common views when it comes to basic values such as human rights, environmental protection, and the banning of weapons of mass destruction. The Global Citizens’ Initiative (TGCI) is an organization that provides information and opportunities for global citizens to join together and advocate for change.

Step 7.  HELP ENSURE YOUR COUNTRY’S FOREIGN POLICY PROMOTES GLOBAL VALUES:   Global citizens also are citizens of the countries in which they were born and live. As such we have the ability to influence the positions that our countries take on global issues. We need to help ensure that our country’s foreign policy supports the building of equitable global solutions to world problems; solutions that work for all countries. So let your government know how you feel by supporting leaders who want their countries to become engaged with the world, not isolated from it.

Step 8.  PARTICIPATE IN ORGANIZATIONS WORKING TO BUILD WORLD COMMUNITY:   There are all sorts of organizations making important contributions to our emerging world community—NGOs, global action networks, international professional associations, transnational corporations, and others. They work on a range of issues related to the values of our world community—ranging from human rights to world arts and culture. Pick one, any one that relates to an issue in which you are interested, and get involved.

Step 9.  NURTURE A LIFESTYLE THAT SUPPORTS SUSTAINABLE GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT:   The environmental movement has taught us a great deal about how everyday lifestyles and behaviors can have an impact on the quality of life on our planet. The types of transportation we use, how we heat or cool our homes, the types of clothes we wear and the food we eat all affect our quality of life. As global citizens we need to adopt environmentally responsible behaviors in the ways we live.

Step 10.  SUPPORT WORLD ART, MUSIC, AND CULTURE:   Being a global citizen is also a celebration of  the many different arts and cultures of our people. Take time to learn the ways in which different cultures give expression to the human spirit.

Visit Kosmos www.kosmosjournal.org to stay connected to the Global Citizens movement.

At The Global Citizens’ Initiative we say that a “global citizen is someone who identifies with being part of an emerging world community and whose actions contribute to building this community’s values and practices.”

To test the validity of this definition we examine its basic assumptions: (a) that there is such a thing as an emerging world community with which people can identify; and (b) that such a community has a nascent set of values and practices.

Historically, human beings have always formed communities based on shared identity. Such identity gets forged in response to a variety of human needs— economic, political, religious and social. As group identities grow stronger, those who hold them organize into communities, articulate their shared values, and build governance structures to support their beliefs.

Today, the forces of global engagement are helping some people identify as global citizens who have a sense of belonging to a world community. This growing global identity in large part is made possible by the forces of modern information, communications and transportation technologies.  In increasing ways these technologies are strengthening our ability to connect to the rest of the world—through the Internet; through participation in the global economy; through the ways in which world-wide environmental factors play havoc with our lives; through the empathy we feel when we see pictures of humanitarian disasters in other countries; or through the ease with which we can travel and visit other parts of the world.

Those of us who see ourselves as global citizens are not abandoning other identities, such as  allegiances to our countries,  ethnicities and political beliefs. These traditional identities give meaning to our lives and will continue to help shape who we are. However, as a result of living in a globalized world, we understand that we have an added layer of  responsibility; we also are responsible for being members of a world-wide community of people who share the same global identity that we have.

We may not yet be fully awakened to this new layer of responsibility, but it is there waiting to be grasped. The major challengethat we face in the new millennium is to embrace our global way of being and build a sustainable values-based world community.

What might our community’s values be? They are the values that world leaders have been advocating for the past 70 years and include human rights, environmental protection, religious pluralism, gender equity, sustainable worldwide economic growth, poverty alleviation, prevention of conflicts between countries, elimination of weapons of mass destruction, humanitarian assistance and preservation of cultural diversity.

Since World War II, efforts have been undertaken to develop global policies and institutional structures that can support these enduring values. These efforts have been made by international organizations, sovereign states, transnational corporations, international professional associations and others. They have resulted in a growing body of international agreements, treaties, legal statutes and technical standards.

Yet despite these efforts we have a long way to go before there is a global policy and institutional infrastructure that can support the emerging world community and the values it stands for. There are significant gaps of policy in many domains, large questions about how to get countries and organizations to comply with existing policy frameworks, issues of accountability and transparency and, most important of all from a global citizenship perspective, an absence of mechanisms that enable greater citizen participation in the institutions of global governance.

The Global Citizens’ Initiative sees the need for a cadre of citizen leaders who can play activist roles in efforts to build our emerging world community. Such global citizenship activism can take many forms, including advocating, at the local and global level for policy and programmatic solutions that address global problems; participating in the decision-making processes of global governance organizations; adopting and promoting changes in behavior that help protect the earth’s environment; contributing to world-wide humanitarian relief efforts; and organizing events that celebrate the diversity in world music and art, culture and spiritual traditions.

Most of us on the path to global citizenship are still somewhere at the beginning of our journey. Our eyes have been opened and our consciousness raised. Instinctively, we feel a connection with others around the world yet we lack the adequate tools, resources, and support to act on our vision. Our ways of thinking and being are still colored by the trapping of old allegiances and ways of seeing things that no longer are as valid as they used to be. There is a longing to pull back the veil that keeps us from more clearly seeing the world as a whole and finding more sustainable ways of connecting with those who share our common humanity.

55 Comments

The author, Ronald Israel, points to the crucially needed and important trend toward global citizenship, which he says: “… can take many forms”.

At the collective, conceptual, world-view, systemic, structural, institutional levels, I  believe that our individual beliefs, values, efforts and actions are synergistic, summating, can are making a real difference.

We can and are affecting change.  A book by Edmund J Bourne entitled: “Global Shift – How a New Worldview is Transforming Humanity” is illustrative. Bourne describes how at the paradigm, world-view level, we are changing things now. Our daily communications and actions are summating, making a difference, and moving the planet community toward a tipping point of potentially massive, positive, transformative change.

There exists a steadily growing consensus that a global SHIFT is now occurring. In the midst of crises and insecurity, we can cultivate the reality awareness that everything is interconnected, that synchronicities in our creative, conscious universe operate symbolically (not only causally), and that in a larger Kosmos-logical context, each of us participates in moving it all toward an integral global tipping point shift in paradigmatic perceptions, core values and aligned actions. Such vision and future is up to us – our being and doing. 

We are relational beings living together in the same global, planetary household. Everything is cocreated. We can nurture conditions for positive transformation. May each of us, individually and together, continue to mold our world into the shape of love, peace, compassion, inclusiveness, sharing, cooperation, equity and justice — a place wherein the essential needs of all are met and the essential rights of all are defended.

Thank you so much, Ron, for this comment. I had not heard of Edmund Bourne’s book on the Global Shift. I will look into this right away. Hope you are taking the Survey which is the beginning of a Kosmos effort to start to connect our various projects for greater impact. Nancy

Thank you, Nancy, for keeping this important article on the Kosmos site.

And thank you, Ron, for your clear synopsis of Edmund Bourne’s book. I just looked it up online and ordered it. For those of us working towards positive, transformational change, this book looks like a keeper.

Analesa Berg

Global Citizenship is one of the focuses of KOSMOS – and I know it is for you too. Thanks for the comment. Nancy

[…] Isreal, R. (2012). What Does It Mean To Be A Global Citizen. Kosmos. Retrieved from  http://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-global-citizen/ […]

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[…] http://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-global-citizen/ […]

[…] Reference: Israel, R. C. (2012). What Does it Mean to be a Global Citizen? , from http://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-global-citizen/ […]

[…] to implementing plans that benefit the community, by building positive practices and values (Israel, 2012). For my learning activity this week I researched an emerging world community known as “The Earth […]

[…] Israel, R. C. (2012). What Does it Mean to be a Global Citizen? Kosmos Journal. Retrieved from http://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-global-citizen/ […]

[…] Israel, R C. (2012). What does it mean to be a global citizen? Retrieved from http://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-global-citizen/ […]

The call to global citizenship is one that should be met with resounding response from individuals, corporate bodies, religious as well as cultural organisations. Infact government of countries should incorporate it in their educational curriculum.it is only when it becomes a collective concern that the world at large ll be a beta place for all humans and non humans

I think it is a great idea but also a dangerous idea for bad people to join and not be able to stop the bad people that are hurting the good citizens.

We are fully dedicated to the task of establishing Borderless Global Democracy on this ailing planet.

[…] ⁶ http://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-global-citizen/ […]

I would be most gratified if we could work together for the good of the planet.

I miss the term “social entrepreneurs” in your list of forms of embodiment of Global Citizenship. And it resonates in your “yet WE lack the adequate tools, resources, and support to act on our vision”. I do not like this and I do not identify with this we. My WE is youth leaders and adult social entrepreneurs with enormously successful transformational, people/powered solutions. Ashoka alone has 3,000, then there are EcoTippingPoints.org and Skoll collections, and countless others. Most of all the teens, 250,000 from 10,000 united at WeDays, and many more powerful teenage changemakers united on the Youth-LeadeR.org platform. What I feel when reading such statements in one of the “best” publications, by some of the “best considered” thinkers and visionaries, I feel a VAST AND DRAMATIC disconnect between the more academic philosophical age 50/60+ community and the thriving, tangible change driving communities at above mentioned communities, with transformational events all over the planet, incl even the obsolete World Economic Forum… to a point that their statements are out of synch with relevant reality that they become irrelevant and outdated. Since the world has evolved to a state where “visionary thinkers” are at the same time “sensational do’ers” and leaders empowering others to be leaders of transformation.

I know that this is something that is still urgently needed and not present in (quoting Harry Potter) the muggle mainstream, – which is why I have founded Youth-LeadeR as a platform connecting hundreds of changemakers’ media, methods and “live” services to the education system in 18 languages… so I share the call for a need – BUT the BRIGHTEST, LOOKED UPON consultants should at least know of it.

I urge you, for the same of all species (YET) alive today and future generations (if they are to be) to study the bright new world of youth leadership, social entrepreneurship and virtually unlimited support networks and action opportunities for each and everyone accessible via the http://www.youth/leader.org menu.

Eric Schneider Images & Voices of Hope IVOH Award 2012 UNESCO Round Table for the Implementation of the UNITED NATIONS Decade of Education for Sustainable Development

Eric, you are so right. Kosmos has been publishing the work of social entrepreneurs since 2001 – at the margins and now coming closer to the mainstream. We were so happy to catch up with you recently and to see the broad expansion of your work with youth entrepreneurs. We published an article about it with some of your brightest youth social entrepreneurs which got a lot of attention from our readers. Although many of us work and identify globally I do not see a Global Citizens Movement that has been successful as yet. Do you? We have been involved in several attempts – with CIVICUS, DEEEP, Tellus Institute, but none has gotten off the ground. My vision is a world where there are no borders between us and we move from a world identified by nations to one of the whole world working together for all. Our whole political system is based on nations today – competing for the world’s resources. We fight wars with our neighbors rather than understanding them. There is so much work ahead of us. I am so happy we have reconnected and can learn about how youth is embracing the new vision and acting on it.

[…] issues so that global citizens can better affect change and understand the world around them. A new marketplace has been created where entrepreneurs can make the money a fortune 500 company make… Economical changes need to accommodate these kinds of businesses. Our governments also need to make […]

[…] Israel, R. (2014). What Does it Mean to be a Global Citizen? | Kosmos Journal.Kosmosjournal.org. Retrieved from http://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-global-citizen/ […]

[…] It is full of a plethora of different people, places and things. Taking the time and effort to learn about how culture (and history) in general might affect someone’s behaviors, values and … reveals a lot about why people do the things they do, the way they do […]

Dear Ronald:

I am writing you regarding Simona Paravani–Mellinghoff’s book “The Kids’ Pocket Guide to the World” that has already been published in U.K. and Slovenia and distributed in Europe and North America.

The Kids’ Pocket Guide to the World is a book for children (8-12) and adults, which states and develops the concept of a globalized world as an ocean of opportunity, through five stories taking place in each of the five continents, and how much important is to rely in seven billion people’s ideas and dreams to overcome the challenges that the world faces.

This book takes the reader on a unique journey across the globe: from the open spaces of the rural Kenya to Nairobi’s high-tech sporting grounds; from a stadium-hospital in Los Angeles to the green pastures of New Zealand; from old Europe with its sleepy palaces to the buzzing streets of Beijing.

The book received excellent feedback from educators and parents and has been adopted as supplementary textbook of school programs in several schools, primary and secondary, in England and Slovenia, and in United States soon.

In addition, this project is linked to charity programs with various NGOs. One of these is MyBnk in London, an award winning charity institution in U.K. that teaches to young people how to manage their money and how to build their own business.

On November 13th 2015, Simona was invited to present her book at UNCA – United Nations Correspondents Associations – at the United Nations in New York, to recognize Simona’s work and involvement in educational and charitable programs in many parts of the world.

Finally, I would like to briefly introduce the author, Simona Paravani–Mellinghoff, first Italian under 40 years to be nominated Financial News Rising Star in 2009 and 2010. She combines a full time job in the financial services to various activities in support of NGOs. In 2003, she published her first novel, Parentesi Cubana, and she manages a website for Italian professionals living abroad, Cervelli in Fuga.

This book is inspired to the many young women Simona has met in her travels, all great examples of how passion and dreams can change many lives and the world around us!

Waiting for your reply, I send you my most cordial greetings.

Gianfrancesco Mottola

Thanks for the work you do to the world

Thank you Hana. We really appreciate hearing from our community and those that are touched by the Kosmos message.

lets go raptors

THANK YOU for this Kosmos Journal article about a Global Citizen’s Movement.

Ever since we saw photos of ourselves looking back at Planet Earth from the moon, we “knew”, in a deep place of our being that, we are one, that

We are “A FAMILY OF ALL BEINGS”.

A “citizen of the world” is not someone solely well-traveled; it is someone well-visioned, who has trekked from “me” to “we”, from ethnocentricity to world-centricity, who sees self as member of a family beyond borders and boundaries of race, religion, class, gender, and geography. A world citizen carries a passport stamped with individual and universal fingerprints of inclusive love, regard, belonging and active caring for our commons and “all our relations” (“Matakuye Oyasin”). The citizen of the world passport is carried in one’s heart, soul and spirit – it transforms barriers into bridges. ~ ron bell

—————-

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” ~ Albert Einstein

—————–

Thank you good luck

THANK YOU for this thoughtful Kosmos Journal article about a Global Citizen’s Movement.

I think we are certainly a l o n g way from actually and practically manifesting its vision (and that of the Earth Charter), but I take heart in an awareness that at the level of paradigmatic consciousness, our world view is in process of changing.

Ever since we saw photos of ourselves looking back at Planet Earth from the moon, we “knew”, in a deep place of our being that, humanity (across arbritary borders) is one, that

We are “A FAMILY OF ALL BEINGS”, interrelated, connected in one relational web of Life.

A “citizen of the world” is not someone just well-traveled; it is someone well-visioned, who has trekked from “me” to “we”, from ethnocentricity to world-centricity, who sees self as member of a family beyond borders and boundaries of race, religion, class, gender, and geography. A world citizen carries a passport stamped with individual and universal fingerprints of inclusive love, regard, belonging and active caring for our commons and “all our relations” (“Matakuye Oyasin”). The citizen of the world passport is carried in one’s heart, soul and spirit – it transforms barriers into bridges. ~ ron bell

Thank you, Ron, for taking the time to add these words of wisdom to the theme of Global Citizenship.

I very much share the sentiments expressed, but under the definition given ‘global citizenship’ remains merely aspirational rather than actual. To become actual, citizenship at any level depends on whether we have a legally binding right to vote. No vote, no citizenship! At the global level, the only initiative that comes close to providing this seems to be the Simultaneous Policy (Simpol) campaign through which citizens in all democratic countries can use their national right to vote to encourage their politicians towards supporting and cooperatively implementing Simpol’s global justice agenda. As a result of this new voting power, politicians in a number of countries already support the campaign.

I have lived my life travelling around the world, ingesting and inhaling cultures and traditions, poverty and wealth. Diseases, you name it. I salute you Mr. Israel. For your global concern.

I’m signing up for any newsletter or blog you may be offering. Thank you. ~Susan Goodhue~

Hi. This may sound simplistic but i would like some guide lines for being a responsible world citizen. For example my son told me in the market not to buy alaskan salmon because ” it has probabley not been caught responsibley”.. I want an i phone and could afford one but the plight of the chinese workers really bothers me…. ? We are so interconnected i feel a responsibility towards all people and do not want to contribute or condone exploitative practices. I need some guide lines. I cannot research every company’s practice? Please help – as a westoner i am at the front of the train and want to be a resonsible citizen ….? How

Hi Bernadette, you might enjoy this: http://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/engaged-ecology-seven-practices-to-restore-our-harmony-with-nature/

the litle have read in this article is a soul touching article to me. the ideology of global citizen can help to solve the problem of nigeria government in solving attitude of corruption in the governance of the country by selfish government official. Nigeria problem is a global government that needs global solution. Nigerians have enduring the situation of hardship since independence, there will come a time that aggressive reaction will come from the people of the country. which may become global concern. can’t we prevent the aggressive reaction from occurring. this is my comment.

That is beautiful and gives hope to this world to help display integrity, morals and values!

I am a Global Citizen I am not a Minority.

You need to get to the point more, not talk about other things first, but good info.

It is Utopia to think of Global citezenship. A world parliament, a single world currency. A world President.Humans have to evolve to think on those terms. Poverty can easily be wiped out. A world religion, which should advocate a single . Religion– A way of Life founded by all Citizens of the World. We are all living on a ” small piece of Rock — called Earth

I agree with this program. Need to know how to join and volunteer.

Please contact http://www.theglobalcitizensinitiative.org for further information.

The idea of global citizenship is a welcome development. The bulk of the work is to be done in Africa, Asian and South America. Basically in countries where the economy is weak and democratic governance is not at the required standard. In these countries, the global citizenship education should be taken to the people through all available mean.Social ,economic and political barriers should be envisaged.

Wow kind lots of information and important part to learn many things.

Hi i am doing a school essay on refugees and global citizenship? Any advice you could give me?

International Rescue Committee is a reliable organization doing great work with refugees. They gave me a grant to work with traumatic stress in the Balkans after the war. The UN also has a trustworthy program. Good luck on the essay, Megan. Nancy Roof

A very concise article. You have opened some more eyes in this matter. We have dealt with a similar article, which also focuses on this topic ( http://incitizen.com/ ). Thank you for your work!

This page is no longer working. We had to change it here: http://myworldwideinvestment.com/

hi, i need to prepare an argumentative essay about global citizenship. Any advice? and what is the exact name of this article other than its title?

Rosaline – This is the exact title of the article, published in Kosmos Journal spring/summer 2012. There are more articles on global citizenship at our website: http://www.kosmosjournal.org . Thank you for your interest.

Very interesting that the 10 steps are in pink. As far as I can discern the values of plural religiosity and gender equity totally exclude the pure Christian values of a mono-theism and heterosexual marriage between one man and one woman for life. So one can be a global citizen as long as one denounces Christianity. In my opinion, anyone who subscribes to the values of the global citizen and calls him/herself a Christian needs to reexamine their theology.

Israeli lawyer Moshe Strugano (Attorney – Moshe Strugano and Co Law firm) says, an expert in the “formation of offshore companies” says,this is great post. You have explained everything here.

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KOSMOS Summer Quarterly, 2018

Unlearning together, awake, awakened, woke, change the worldview, change the world, presence at the edge of our practice, dynamic governance, roots and evolution of mindfulness, indigenous worldview is a source we now urgently need, the wanderer’s preparation in the death lodge, the deschooling dialogues: grief, collapse, and mysticism, social breakdown and initiation, forgive: the new practice and mantra for black men, the migrant quilt, the connection, healing into consciousness, wealth and abundance, confessions of a recovering catholic, the habits of schooling, an uncommon song, purposeful memoir as a path to alignment, being human, the night i didn’t stand up, absence presence, yorkston/thorne/khan.

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Globalization  is the connection of different parts of the world. Globalization results in the expansion of international cultural, economic, and political activities. As people, ideas, knowledge, and goods move more easily around the globe, the experiences of people around the world become more similar . Globalization in History Globalization has a long history, for example, Ancient Greek culture was spread across much of southwestern Asia, northern Africa, and southern Europe. The globalization of Greek culture came with the conqueror  Alexander the Great . In fact, there are cities named for Alexander in Iraq (Iskandariya), Egypt (Alexandria), and Turkey (Alexandria Troas). The  Silk Road , a  trade route  between China and the Mediterranean, promoted the exchange of ideas and knowledge, along with trade goods and foods such as silk, spices, porcelain, and other treasures from the East. When Europeans began  establishing colonies overseas, globalization grew. Many early European explorers were eager to bring the  Christian religion to the regions they visited. The globalization of Christianity spread from Europe to  Latin America  through Christian missionaries working with the local populations. Globalization was  accelerated in the nineteenth century with the  Industrial Revolution , as mechanical  mills and factories became more common. Many companies used  raw materials from distant lands. They also sold their goods in other countries. Britain’s  colony  in India, for instance, supplied  cotton  to British  merchants and traders .  Madras , a light cotton cloth, was made in the city of Madras (now called Chennai), a major  port  in India. Eventually, madras cloth was no longer manufactured in Madras at all—the Indian  labor force  supplied the raw material , cotton . Factories in the county of Lancashire, England, created madras cloth. British factories made fabric and other goods from the cotton . British manufacturers could then sell their  finished goods , such as clothing and blankets, to buyers all over the world—the United States, Brazil, Australia, even India. Globalization sped up dramatically in the twentieth century with the  proliferation  of air travel , the expansion of  free trade , and the dawn of the  Information Age . Miles of  fiber-optic  cable now connect the continents, allowing people around the world to communicate instantly through the borderless World Wide Web. Communication Modern  communication  has played a large role in cultural globalization . Today, news and information zips instantly around the world on the  internet . People can read information about foreign countries as easily as they read about their local news. Through globalization , people may become aware of incidents very quickly. In seconds, people are able to respond to  natural disasters that happen thousands of miles away. Many people access information through improved and new technology, such as cell phones . About 70 percent of the people in the world use  cell phones . A farmer in Nigeria can easily talk to his cousin who moved to New York, New York. The success of global news  networks like CNN have also contributed to globalization . People all over the world have access to the same news 24 hours a day.

Travel Increased international  travel  has also increased globalization . Each year, millions of people move from one country to another in search of work. Sometimes, these  migrant  workers travel a short distance, such as between the Mexican state of Sonora and the U.S. state of California. Sometimes, migrant workers travel many thousands of miles. Migrant workers from the Philippines, for instance, may travel to Europe, Australia, or North America to find better-paying jobs. People do not travel just for work, of course. Millions of people take vacations to foreign countries. Most of these international  tourists are from developed countries. Many are most comfortable with goods and services that resemble what they have at home. In this way, globalization encourages countries around the world to provide typical Western services. The facilities of a Holiday Inn hotel, for instance, are very similar , whether the location is Bangor, Maine, or Bangkok, Thailand. Travel and tourism have made people more familiar with other cultures. Travelers are exposed to new ideas about food, which may change what they buy at the store at home. They are exposed to ideas about goods and services, which may increase demand for a specific product that may not be available at home. They are exposed to new ideas, which may influence how they vote. In this way, globalization influences trade , taste, and culture. Popular Culture Popular culture has also become more globalized. People in the United States enjoy listening to South African music and reading Japanese comic books. American soap operas are popular in Israel. India, for instance, has a thriving film industry, nicknamed “ Bollywood .” Bollywood movies are popular both in India and with the huge population of Indians living abroad . In fact, some Bollywood movies do much better in the United States or the United Kingdom than they do in India. Clothing styles have also become more uniform as a result of globalization . National and regional  costumes have become rarer as globalization has increased. In most parts of the world, professionals such as bankers wear suits, and jeans and T-shirts are common for young people. There has also been an increasing exchange of foods across the globe. People in England eat Indian  curry , while people in Peru enjoy Japanese  sushi . Meanwhile, American fast food chains have become common throughout the world.  McDonald's  has more than 37,000 restaurants in over 100 countries. And people all across the world are eating more meat and sugary foods, like those sold in fast food restaurants. The worldwide expansion of McDonald’s has become a symbol of globalization . Some menu items, such as the Big Mac, are the same all over the world. Other menu items are specific to that region. McDonalds in Japan features a green-tea flavored milkshake. At McDonald’s in Uruguay, a “McHuevo” is a burger topped with a fried egg. Globalization has brought McDonald’s to billions of consumers worldwide.

Economy The international  economy  has also become more globalized in recent  decades . International  trade  is vital to the economies of most countries around the world. American  software  companies, such as Microsoft, rely on international trade to make large  profits . The economy of the country of Saudi Arabia is almost entirely dependent on  oil   exports . To increase trade , many countries have created free trade agreements with other countries. Under free trade agreements, countries agree to remove trade barriers. For example, they may stop charging  tariffs , or taxes , on imports . In 1994, the United States, Mexico, and Canada signed the  North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) , which eventually ended all tariffs on trade goods between the three nations. This allowed globalization of goods and services, as well as people and ideas, between these three countries. Most large  corporations operate in many countries around the world.  HSBC , the world’s largest bank, has offices in 88 different countries. Originally, HSBC stood for Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation , which was founded in 1865 to promote trade between China and the United Kingdom. Today, HSBC has its headquarters in London, England. Economic globalization has allowed many corporations based in the West to move factories and jobs to less economically developed countries, a process called  outsourcing . The corporation can pay lower wages , because the  standard of living  in less developed countries is much lower. Laws protecting the environment and workers’ safety are less widespread in developing countries, which also lowers costs for the corporation . Often, this results in lower costs for consumers, too. Economic  markets are global. People and organizations invest in companies all over the globe. Because of this,  economic downturns in one country are repeated in other countries. The  financial crisis  that began in the United States in 2006 quickly spread around the world. The way globalization allowed this situation to spread led to the nation of Iceland nearly going  bankrupt , for example. Politics Cultural and economic globalization have caused countries to become more connected politically. Countries frequently cooperate to enact trade agreements. They work together to open their borders to allow the movement of money and people needed to keep economic globalization working. Because people, money, and computerized information move so easily around the globe, countries are increasingly working together to fight  crime . The idea of maintaining international law has also grown. In 2002, the  International Criminal Court  was established . This court, which handles cases such as war crimes , has a global reach, although not all countries have accepted it. Many problems facing the world today cross national borders , so countries must work together to solve them. Efforts to confront problems such as global  climate change  must involve many different countries. In 2009, representatives from 170 countries gathered at a conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, to discuss climate change . Other international issues include  terrorism ,  drug trafficking , and  immigration . The process of globalization is very  controversial . Many people say globalization will help people communicate. Aid agencies can respond more quickly to a natural disaster . Advanced medicines are more easily and widely available to people who may not have been able to afford them. Jobs available through globalization have lifted many people out of  poverty . Globalization has increased the number of students studying  abroad . Not everyone says that globalization is good, however. Some people worry that Western culture will destroy local cultures around the world. They fear that everyone will end up eating hamburgers and watching Hollywood movies. Others point out that people tend to adopt some aspects of other cultures without giving up their own. Ironically, modern technology is often used to preserve and spread traditional beliefs and customs. Opponents to globalization blame free trade for unfair working conditions. They also say that outsourcing has caused  wealthy  countries to lose too many jobs. Sup porters of globalization say that factory workers in poor countries are making much better wages than they would at other jobs available to them. They also argue that free trade has lowered prices in wealthier countries and improved the economy of poorer countries.

Battle in Seattle The 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) was held in Seattle, Washington, United States. This meeting was protested by thousands of people opposed to globalization. The protests turned violent. Hundreds of people were arrested. Many were injured in confrontations with police. Many buildings were damaged. The incident is sometimes called "the Battle in Seattle."

Powerful Peppers Food has long been an important part of globalization. Today, foods in Korea and many parts of China are often spicy. They get their spice from chili peppers. This was not the case before the 1600s. The fiery chili pepper is native to the Western Hemisphere. Christopher Columbus first brought chilies to Europe in 1493, and from there they spread across Asia.

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A Global Perspective: Bringing the World Into Classrooms

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The need for students to be able to empathize with others, value diverse perspectives and cultures, understand how events around the world are interconnected, and solve problems that transcend borders has never been greater. Just consider the recent attacks inspired by hate and terrorism in Orlando, Fla., San Bernardino, Calif., Brussels, Paris, Tunis, Istanbul, and Yemen, or the unparalleled flow of migrants—many of them children—from war- and violence-stricken regions in the Middle East and Central America. Then there’s threat of damaging and deadly viruses such as Zika and Ebola hopping across people and countries.

The quick tick of news headlines exemplifies just how interconnected the world is today. It also points to the intercultural collaboration and problem-solving skills necessary to thwart the hatred that spawns terrorist attacks, successfully integrate culturally and linguistically diverse populations into classrooms and communities, and solve health and environmental crises.

Engaging students with the world is one step toward one day accomplishing such objectives. But what should educators teach to ensure that all students are prepared to successfully engage in the globalized world in which they already live? Furthermore, what steps can educators take to effectively foster globally minded knowledge, skills, and attitudes in students?

As part of the movement to educate the whole child and ensure students are challenged academically and prepared for participation in a global environment, the organization for which I work, ASCD, has launched an effort to focus on answering these questions. The place to start, I believe, is with some definitions on what global engagement means in a practical sense.

More Than a ‘21st-Century Skill’

For students to participate effectively in the global community, they will need to develop global competence: the attitudes, knowledge, and skills needed to live and work in today’s interconnected world and to build a sustainable, peaceful, inclusive world for the future. Global competence is often, and rightly, labeled a “21st century skill” needed for employment in today’s global economy. Yet global competence is so much more than a ticket to a competitive job. Students also need global competence to participate as empathetic, engaged, and effective citizens of the world.

What exactly does global competence entail? Many organizations have devised specific frameworks that define the term (see examples from the Asia Society , the OECD , World Savvy , and the Globally-Competent Teaching Continuum ). These frameworks tend to coalesce around the following attitudes, knowledge, and skills:

• Attitudes : This includes openness, respect, and appreciation for diversity; valuing of multiple perspectives, including an awareness of the cultural and experiential influences that shape one’s own and others’ perspectives; empathy; and social responsibility, or a desire to better the human condition on a local and global scale.

• Knowledge : This refers to the ability to understand global issues and current events; global interdependence, including the impact of global events on local conditions and vice versa; the processes of globalization and its effects on economic and social inequities locally and globally; world history; culture; and geography.

• Skills : These includes the ability to communicate across cultural and linguistic boundaries, including the ability to speak, listen, read, and write in more than one language; collaborate with people who have diverse cultural, racial, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds; think critically and analytically; problem-solve; and take action on issues of global importance.

Connecting Educators Across the World

Just as teachers of algebra know how to solve equations and music teachers know how to play scales, educators should also strive to develop these global competencies in themselves so that they can foster them in their students.

Engaging with the world is one way educators can develop global competence. Traditionally in the United States, educators as a whole have experienced limited training around global diversity. For example, very few teacher-preparation programs provide opportunities for preservice teachers to study abroad or require coursework in global topics. Therefore, connecting practicing teachers, principals, and district leaders across communities and continents through summits, conferences, exchanges, and virtual meetings geared towards common professional learning needs can provide experiences that help develop a globally oriented mindset, knowledge base, and skill set. Furthermore, when provided a platform to network, educators can lead the way in changing the broader education system locally and globally to better support the whole child and elevate the teaching profession.

A number of opportunities already exist for teachers to connect with one another across the world. There are an array of exchange programs run by the U.S. State Department and NGOs (e.g., American Councils for International Education , EF Tours , Teachers2Teachers-International ) that provide educators with opportunities for meaningful cross-cultural interactions. And if travel is not always feasible due to financial or familial obligations, teachers can still engage with the wider world through virtual exchanges that connect classrooms across the globe as partners in learning activities that prepare students to be productive, engaged citizens of the world (for example, iEARN , Global SchoolNet ).

Classroom Strategies

There are plenty of steps that educators can take today to put students on the path towards creating a better world for tomorrow. This doesn’t require legislation that mandates a change in the curriculum, the introduction of a global studies course for graduation, or a line item from the state or federal budget. In a recent study of teachers committed to globally competent teaching , researchers found that the educators used the following common strategies to foster global citizenship and competency:

• Integrating global topics and perspectives across content areas. Globally competent teaching does not require a separate course or unit of study. Instead, teachers infused global content into the required curriculum, regardless of subject area. For example, math teachers used real-world global challenges as contexts for introducing new concepts (e.g., using word problems on population growth as a way to teach the rules of exponents) and language arts teachers used texts that represent diverse cultural perspectives and that take place in settings around the world to teach literature and informational texts.

• Providing opportunities for authentic engagement with global issues. Teachers provided real-world audiences for students to engage with around global issues. This took the form of pen pal and Skype exchanges with schools in other countries, service-learning projects emphasizing issues of global concern (e.g., access to clean water), or working in teams to devise and debate solutions to real-world problems, such as climate change, and sharing those solutions with government leaders. Notably, these activities were student-centered and inquiry-based.

• Connecting the global experiences of students and teachers to the classroom. Teachers adopted culturally responsive teaching practices that incorporated the cultures, languages, perspectives, and experiences of diverse students into curriculum and instruction. Teachers also incorporated their own cross-cultural experiences into the classroom through informal conversation, discussions around artifacts and photos, and lesson plans that incorporated knowledge gained and relationships built through their global experiences.

With these strategies in hand, the time is now for teachers to engage themselves, and their students, with the world. The lives of all students, no matter their zip code or their cultural, racial, linguistic, or economic background, are in some way influenced by the wider world. They too have the potential to shape that world. Their future, and the future of our world, depends on it.

What does global engagement mean to you? Why do you think it is important? Join the conversation by posting your reflections in the comments section.

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Article contents

Global citizenship.

• April R. Biccum April R. Biccum School of Politics and International Relations, Australian National University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.556
• Published online: 19 November 2020

The concept of “Global Citizenship” is enjoying increased currency in the public and academic domains. Conventionally associated with cosmopolitan political theory, it has moved into the public domain, marshaled by elite actors, international institutions, policy makers, nongovernmental organizations, and ordinary people. At the same time, scholarship on Global Citizenship has increased in volume in several domains (International Law, Political Theory, Citizenship Studies, Education, and Global Business), with the most substantial growth areas in Education and Political Science, specifically in International Relations and Political Theory. The public use of the concept is significant in light of what many scholars regard as a breakdown and reconfiguration of national citizenship in both theory and practice. The rise in its use is indicative of a more general change in the discourse on citizenship. It has become commonplace to offer globalization as a cause for these changes, citing increases in regular and irregular migration, economic and political dispossession owing to insertion in the global economy, the ceding of sovereignty to global governance, the pressure on policy caused by financial flows, and cross-border information-sharing and political mobilization made possible by information communications technologies (ICTs), insecurities caused by environmental degradation, political fragmentation, and inequality as key drivers of change. Global Citizenship is thus one among a string of adjectives attempting to characterize and conceptualize a transformative connection between globalization, political subjectivity, and affiliation. It is endorsed by elite global actors and the subject of an educational reform movement. Some scholarship observes empirical evidence of Global Citizenship, understood as active, socially and globally responsible political participation which contributes to global democracy, within global institutions, elites, and the marginalized themselves. Arguments for or against a cosmopolitan sensibility in political theory have been superseded by both the technological capability to make global personal legal recognition a possibility, and by the widespread endorsement of Global Citizenship among the Global Education Policy regime. In educational scholarship Global Citizenship is regarded as a form of contemporary political being that needs to be socially engineered to facilitate the spread of global democracy or the emergence of new political arrangements. Its increasing currency among a diverse range of actors has prompted a variety of attempts either to codify or to study the variety of usages in situ. As such the use of Global Citizenship speaks to a central methodological problem in the social sciences: how to fix key conceptual variables when the same concepts are a key aspect of the behavior of the actors being studied? As a concept, Global Citizenship is also intimately associated with other concepts and theoretical traditions, and is among the variety of terms used in recent years to try to reconceptualize changes it the international system. Theoretically it has complex connections to cosmopolitanism, liberalism, and republicanism; empirically it is the object of descriptive and normative scholarship. In the latter domain, two central cleavages repeat: the first is between those who see Global Citizenship as the redress for global injustices and the extension of global democracy, and those who see it as irredeemably capitalist and imperial; the second is between those who see evidence for Global Citizenship in the actions and behavior of a wide range of actors, and those who seek to socially engineer Global Citizenship through educational reform.

• globalization
• global governance
• cosmopolitanism
• citizenship
• global civil society

What is Global Citizenship?

Global Citizenship (hereafter GC) as a concept is enjoying some currency in the public and academic domains. The theory and study of GC has been a growth industry especially in philosophy, international relations, and education, and it has been adopted as a central educational reform under the Sustainable Development Goals and endorsed by major international organizations, think tanks, and the expanded regime of Global Education Policy (Mundy, 2016 ). What is meant by GC varies between political actors and academics. The academic literature on GC divides into two branches. The normative theoretical branch has a number of overlaps and engagements with cosmopolitan, liberal, and republican political theory. The empirical scholarship, meanwhile, observes GC’s existence in individual behavior and the structures of transnational organization; in the case of education, empirical scholarship offers ways and means of producing GC through a reform of pedagogy, curriculum, and educational design. It is commonplace to begin any discussion of GC with an account of cosmopolitan political theory dating back to the ancients. The problem with this account is that these theoretical arguments for and against GC have been superseded both by its increasingly widespread use among political actors and by the technological capability to make it something of an institutional reality. GC is no longer simply a theoretical or philosophical discussion but is increasingly also a diversified field of empirical study. The problem with the study of GC empirically is that it is one of those conceptual variables that cuts across scholarship and public use. It is a concept, according to Reinhart Koselleck’s understanding of that term, in that it is an inherently contestable carrier of signification with multiple meanings (Koselleck, 2002 ).

What is true of GC is equally true of citizenship. Both are used by political actors and institutions, and also by academics, to inform empirical study; they are equally both concepts that inform normative political theory about the ordering foundations of society. They thus straddle the distance near (ordinary usage), distance far (academic and technocratic usage), and the normative theoretical of both political actors and academics (other conceptual variables with a similar bifurcation are democracy and the state) (Ferguson & Mansbach, 2010 ; Mitchell, 1991 ). This entanglement speaks to methodological problems at the heart of all social science endeavor: the use of the same concepts by political actors, institutions, and academics; and the problem of trying to fix those concepts for the purposes of advancing knowledge, or equally, trying to elaborate them philosophically for the purposes of creating social change. In the case of both citizenship and GC, the attempt to use various methodological techniques to fix their meaning and tie them to concrete empirical phenomena (Sartori, 1984 ) is unproductive because all these concepts are quintessential examples of the fact that political actors are themselves also self-conscious conceptualizers. Moreover, the way GC is conceptualized by certain political actors is currently having concrete political outcomes (Biccum, 2018b , 2020 ). Trying to improve its study by using Sartori’s ladder of abstraction to parse it into conceptual precision will not do when conceptualization is itself an integral part of its political impact and institutionalization. Moreover, there is increasing overlap between academic scholarship and the concept’s political operationalization, particularly in education.

Interpretive social science offers a way of grappling with this complexity by recognizing what a concept is (i.e., the function in language that allows for multiplicity of meaning and abstraction) (Koselleck, 2002 ), the ubiquity of the use of concepts for all language users (Geertz, 1973 ), and methodological techniques that are consistent with the properties of language and its study in use (Fairclough, 1989 ; Schaffer, 2016 ). The interpretivist approach is more appropriate for fleshing out the complexity of defining GC by recognizing that the rise in its use both academically and politically is in response to changing circumstances, but also and concurrently that its take up is an attempt to by actors to change political circumstances. The interpretivist approach equips scholars with a sensitivity for assessing how and why GC’s use is significant. GC is one among a variety of adjectival variations on citizenship, but it is one that has taken greater hold than any of its rivals and, depending on who uses it and how, has implications for a shift in identity and allegiance from the national to the global. Therefore, its increased use by elites and operationalization in policy to affect change should be recognized as politically significant. Interpretive social science provides the analytical and methodological tools to ground, locate, and elucidate the various meanings of GC in theory and in practice (Schaffer, 2016 ).

Citizenship, as a concept, is also both a variably applied political institution and a contested theoretical concept. It emerged as a body of study in its own right in the 20th century only to be problematized toward the end of the century with a variety of qualifying adjectives, including postnational citizenship (Rose, 1996 ), the denationalization of citizenship (Soysal, 1994 ), extrastatal citizenship (Lee, 2014 ), cultural citizenship (Richardson, 1998 ), minority citizenship (Yuval-Davis, 1997 ), ecological citizenship (van Steenbergen, 1994 ), cosmopolitan citizenship (Held, 1995 ), consumer citizenship (Stevenson, 1997 ), and mobility citizenship (Urry, 1990 ). The meaning and theorization of citizenship itself in the context of globalization have undergone some considerable contestation. In the late 1990s, sociologist John Urry noted the contradiction that just as everyone is seeking to be a citizen of an existing national society, globalization is changing what it means to be a citizen (Urry, 1999 ). For some theorists of citizenship, it has normative dimensions. Brian Turner in particular made a distinction between a conservative view of citizenship as passive and private, and a more revolutionary idea of citizenship as active and public (Bowden, 2003 ; Turner, 1990 ). For theorists of citizenship it is a mode of political membership that has as a performative nature, even by those who are not officially recognized. Understood this way, it is a quintessentially democratic political subjectivity, where agency is expressed in struggles for rights and inclusion for the benefit of self and others.

Historicized as an actually existing political institution, citizenship can be shown to be a mechanism of differentiation through rights allocation, inclusion, and exclusion that is unavoidably connected to state and imperial violence, interest, and power. For critical scholars, it is gendered, racialized, and colonial and has been a mechanism not for the expansion of civil, political, and social rights (as canonized in Marshall’s 1949 account) but as a means of conferring those rights on the few (Isin & Nyers, 2014b ; Marshall, 1949 ). Editors of the Routledge Handbook of GC Studies survey the various ways in which national citizenship has been conceptualized and how Citizenship Studies must be revised in light of globalization (Isin & Nyers, 2014b ; Lee, 2014 ). A work in “critical Citizenship Studies,” this volume notes that citizenship has been defined as membership, status, practice, or performance, with each definition harboring presumptions about politics and agency. To overcome these shortcomings, the editors offer a minimal definition which contains conceptual complexity. For Isin and Nyers, citizenship is “an institution, mediating rights between the subjects of politics and the polity” (Isin & Nyers, 2014a , p. 1). The word “polity” enables a conceptualization of diverse political entities and overlapping governance configurations. “Rights mediation” recognizes that citizenship is inclusive and exclusive simultaneously and that it is most often expanded through political struggle. Finally, the “Subject” is a way of understanding political behavior on the part of people with no formal institutional recognition. The volume aims to address the fact that Citizenship Studies is globalizing because people around the world are articulating their struggles through the political institution of citizenship, and they see this struggle as the performative dimension or enactment of citizenship in political behavior that makes claims upon states and governing institutions. This is why scholars are engaged in “a competition to invent new names to describe the political subjects that are enacting political agency today. Whether it is the Activist or the Actant, the Militant or the Multitude” (Isin & Nyers, 2014a , p. 5). Contributors to this volume are highly skeptical of the concept of GC, but this is precisely the kind of active enactment of rights and responsibilities that scholars of GC see as evidence of its existence, or endorsement for its contribution to the globalization of democracy. Thus, the emergence of GC is part and parcel of the very contestation over citizenship that contributors to this volume see as evidence for grassroots political agency and democratic political change.

As a concept, GC is often linked with the body of cosmopolitan political thought dating back to antiquity (Heater, 1996 ), but this association needs to be qualified. Its increased usage in the early 21st century among scholars, philosophers, policymakers, global institutions, and educators has been prolific, leading to several attempts in the literature to codify its various meanings (Fanghanel & Cousin, 2012 ; Hicks, 2003 ; Sant, Davies, Pashby, & Shultz, 2018 ), or to study its variation in use empirically (Gaudelli, 2009 ). Some have argued that its conceptual heterogeneity is strategically advantageous for those who are using it in practice, and political actors particularly in education have devoted a substantial amount of time to conceptualizing it for the purposes of its articulation in policy (Biccum, 2018b ; Hartmeyer, 2015 ). In the education space, an agreed-upon meaning organized around attitudes, aptitudes, and behavior is now being utilized by international organizations (specifically the United Nations, United Nations Education Science and Culture Organisation, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), which are disseminating their preferred definitions through the expanded global education community via declarations, policy advice, research, information portals, and international conferences. Attempts to codify the different meanings of GC in the academic scholarship have used different metatheoretical concepts to understand the systematic organization of meaning, among them heuristics (Gaudelli, 2009 ), discourse (Karlberg, 2008 ; Parmenter, 2011 ; Schattle, 2015 ; Shukla, 2009 ), ideology (Pais & Costa, 2017 ; Schattle, 2008 ), and typology (Andreotti, 2014 ; Oxley & Morris, 2013 ). For all this definitional and metatheoretical categorization, what cuts across all are the notions that a global citizen is a type of person (endowed with a certain kind of knowledge, values, attitudes, and aptitudes) and that GC is expressed in behavior (always active). Oxley and Morris’s ( 2013 ) codification is often cited in educational scholarship that is working to provide the pedagogical and theoretical foundations for producing Global Citizens (Bosio & Torres, 2019 ) or critically contesting existing practices and theoretical models of GC education in order to make them live up to what both scholarly factions regard as its emancipatory potential (Andreotti, 2014 ).

The various attempts to codify the use of GC in situ tend to make a distinction between hegemonic use and attempts by both scholars and political actors to expand its meaning for political purposes. In this context Oxley and Morris ( 2013 ) make a distinction between “cosmopolitan based” GC Education, which is further nuanced by political, moral, economic, and cultural considerations; and “advocacy based,” which is inflected by social, critical, environmental, and spiritual features. This distinction effectively codifies the differences between official uses of GC by elite actors, and the contestations from critical practitioners and scholars who seek to expand its official meaning (a) to include the grassroots activity of activists; and (b) in educational policy and practice, to include knowledge of global capital and European colonial history, a normative attitude against the inequalities and injustices these have produced, and the aptitude to hold elite actors to account (Andreotti & Souza, 2011 ). Gaudelli ( 2009 ) and Schattle ( 2008 ) based their discursive and ideological codifications on methodologically informed definitions of discourse and ideology and an empirical focus on the use of the concept in multiple sites. Gaudelli identifies five different discursive framings (neoliberal, nationalist, Marxist, world justice and governance, and cosmopolitan), and Schattle ( 2008 ) deploys an ideological analysis to determine whether the discourse of GC in education constitutes a new “globalist” ideology. He finds that in fact it remains inflected by varieties of liberal ideology, even its critical variants, because of its emphasis on human rights, equality, and social justice.

Despite contestations over meaning and use, there are those in the literature who regard GC as the conceptual iteration that underpins a hegemonic ordering of a global governance to further globalize the market by creating market-ready “neoliberal subjectivities” (Chapman, Ruiz-Chapman, & Eglin, 2018 ), or who argue that the proselytizing gesture of its proponents and its rootedness in Western liberal democratic culture make it inescapably imperial (Andreotti & Souza, 2011 ). A common accusation is that GC is an attempt to put a progressive veneer on the global market. In addition, definitions of GC that link it to worldly cosmopolitan values, high-tech skills, and enough cross-cultural knowledge to enable flexibility and adaptability map neatly onto the kinds of subjectivities one will find among the world’s most privileged and highly mobile workers. For critics, there is evidence for this critique in the individualizing and entrepreneurial programs which make elites responsible for limited social change that won’t disrupt market relations. Conversely, the neorepublican and neoliberal response to this critique is that citizenship is inseparable from market-based participation in society because it is the market’s tendency to untether people from social, political, and economic constraints and to diversify the economy that creates free rational agents capable of participating democratically (Lovett & Pettit, 2009 ). From this perspective, chauvinism, discrimination, and communitarianism are bad for global markets, ergo the promotion of the progressive social values of GC is good for the global economy. The critics of GC are quite right in that it is being articulated and reframed to fit the particular ideological commitments of promarket actors in certain sites (Chapman et al., 2018 ; Pais & Costa, 2017 ). However, paying close empirical attention to how conceptualization works, what should be emphasized is that GC’s heterogeneity, fluidity, and contested meaning ensure that it cannot be dismissed as essentially one thing and serving a single purpose (Biccum, 2020 ). Instead, close empirical attention needs to be paid to who is using it, how, and for what purpose.

The Theory of GC

It is commonplace to want to tell the story of GC as the next step in the genealogy of the cosmopolitan tradition. But the picture is more complex than that, because while both cosmopolitanism and GC have close family ties with liberal political theory, it is a mistake to collapse them because there are articulations of liberalism which reject cosmopolitanism, such as the work of John Rawls. Equally, in GC’s associations with antiquity there are concrete connections also with republican political thought (Pagden, 2000 ). In fact, republicanism has equally enjoyed a revival since the 1990s (Costa, 2009 ; Dagger, 2006 ; Lovett & Pettit, 2009 ) and, when examined in detail, the approach to the market found in elite articulations of GC do bear a closer affinity with neorepublicanism than, as critics maintain, neoliberalism (Biccum, 2020 ). The work of Luis Cabrera argues for maintaining a distinction between cosmopolitanism and GC while understanding their connections (Cabrera, 2008 ). Succinct political theories of GC have emerged (Carter, 2001 ; Dower, 2000 ; Tully, 2014 ), some of which try to counter this tradition and some of which marshal GC as a suitable replacement for aggressive American militarism (Arneil, 2007 ; Hunter, 1992 ), arguing that it will allow the United States to pass an “Augustan Threshold.” However articulated theoretically, GC is intimately tied up with questions of human nature, political subjectivity, and appropriate political arrangements, such as polis, state, republic, global governance, world state or empire, with a characteristic omission of political arrangements deemed less formal or “modern.”

The commonplace narrative that places GC within the history of the repetitive revival of cosmopolitan thought is best expressed by April Carter ( 2001 ) and Derek Heater ( 1996 ), whose histories observe a cycle of periodic revival in which the structural contradictions of imperial formations follow a pattern of critique and externalization. Heater begins with Aristotle’s view of the polis as a form of political organization that is congruent with the nature of man. 1 This is an intellectual gesture that naturalizes the polis, making it an expression of the final and perfect condition of human development, and provides legitimacy for its transplantation elsewhere (similar to Hegel’s view of the state). These ideas were put under sustained pressure from circumstances that bear a remarkable similarity to patterns coded by contemporary scholars as “globalization,” including territorial expansion, extensions of governance, migration, and the privatization of the military. Cosmopolitan ideas, Heater argues, arise out of the failure of the polis to live up to claims that it is the expression of human nature. This led to the exploration of two other ideas: the true nature of human beings should be sought either in solitary individualism, or in the essential oneness of the human race. These were first articulated by figures who were critical of existing political arrangements such as Diogenes, Cicero, and Zeno. According to Heater, the periodic revival of cosmopolitan ideas since ancient times is caused by a sense of external threat, whether it be war or environmental catastrophe. Each articulation differs in emphasis over the role of the state, the role of the individual, the role of global institutions, and the desirability of a world state. Similarly, historian Anthony Pagden offers a genealogy of cosmopolitan thought which sees it as indelibly rooted in imperial structures but finds its culmination in the global republicanism of Immanuel Kant, in which Pagden finds there are also critiques of imperialism (Pagden, 2000 ). Thus, an analytical distinction must be maintained between concrete political projects for the realization of global democracy or a world state, and cosmopolitan political philosophy, although they certainly intersect. So, for example, the early cosmopolitans did not devise plans for constitutions and governance, and early- 20th-century advocates for a world state (such as H. G. Wells) were not philosophers (Heater, 1996 ). The International Relations (IR) scholarship which sees the eventuation of a world state deriving from structural conditions is not necessarily engaging normatively with the concept of GC (Ruggie, 2002 ; Wendt, 2003 ), and some scholarship on GC sees its democratic potential in the fact that it is a set of citizen claims, attitudes, and behaviors in the absence of a world state (Dower, 2000 ; Dower & Williams, 2002 ; Falk, 2002 ).

Understanding GC as the culmination in the genealogy of cosmopolitan thought also conflicts with the cosmopolitan revival in IR, although these scholars repeat the formulation described by Heater: namely, the contradictions of globalization demonstrate the flaws in the Hegelian understanding that the nation state is the perfect reflection of human rationality and the only political arrangement that will enable the full flowering of human development. The turn to cosmopolitanism in IR is also occasioned by the end of the Cold War and the disillusionment with Marx in the context of a recognition of diverse identities and non-class-based modes of social, political, and economic exclusion and the new social movements that sprang up as a redress. The cosmopolitan vision for the extension of democracy through reformed institutions is articulated by Richard Linklater ( 1998 ), Daniele Archibugi ( 1993 ), and David Held ( 1995 ) as a redress for these structural conditions. The sovereign state cannot continue to claim to be the only relevant moral community when the opportunities and incidences of transnational harm rise alongside increasing interdependence (Doyle, 2007 ). Similar to their ancient counterparts, Linklater, Archibugi, and Held offer cosmopolitan democracy as both a critique of the Hegelian theory of the state as the highest expression human rationality and a method of expanding democracy transnationally. Both Archibugi and Linklater offer the possibility of direct citizen participation in global institutions as the mechanism that would make for a robust global democracy. Global or world citizenship is implicated in this project, but these scholars do not offer a political theory of GC as such.

The cosmopolitan revival in political theory does, however, theorize GC as a way of reconfiguring ethical foundations of the individual connection to state and world (Appiah, 2007 ; Nussbaum, 1996 ; Parekh, 2003 ). The cosmopolitanism of these scholars is organized around the premise that, in the context of “complex interdependence,” individuals in advanced economies have ethical obligations to the rest of the human race which can override their obligations to fellow citizens. Contained within many arguments in favor of GC is a latent criticism of the nation state and transnational capital. For Thomas Pogge ( 1992 ) this amounts to recognition of the insertion of the citizens of advanced economies into global value and production chains; for Bhiku Parekh this amounts to recognition of the political and economic debt gained through European colonization, and he calls for a globally oriented national citizenship (Parekh, 2003 ). 2

The central cleavage is the relevance and role of the state. Critics of GC argue that GC’s rootless sense of obligation from nowhere undermines Aristotelian notions of civic virtue, and that the nation state is the only community where active citizenship can be practiced (Carter, 2001 ; Miller, 1999 ; Walzer, 1994 ). Others offer GC as a way of being that does not devalue, erode, or supersede the nation state. Nigel Dower, for example, argued in 2000 that a world state is not needed for GC (Dower, 2000 ). Here he is responding to critics who argued at the time that GC cannot exist, because of a lack of common identity and institutions. Some scholars offer “rooted cosmopolitanism” as an affinity to the global that is grounded in individual biography and location (Kymlicka & Walker, 2012 ). Similarly, Martha Nussbaum sparked a debate among prominent political, social, legal, and literary theorists over the competing merits of national versus cosmopolitan affinity, and offered concentric circles of affinity from the individual to the global because the state as nothing more than a “morally arbitrary boundary” (Nussbaum, 1996 , p. 14). Nussbaum later revised this position to articulate a “globally sensitive patriotism,” arguing that the sentiments that underpin patriotism can be used to rescue the concept from its chauvinistic variants, allowing it then to play a role in creating a “decent world culture” (Nussbaum, 2008 , p. 81). But for most of these scholars the state is the starting point for either advocacy or critique of GC.

There are other scholars in the analytic tradition attaching to GC a notion of cosmopolitan right, meaning the restriction of individual freedom so that it harmonizes with the freedom of everyone else. For Luis Cabrera ( 2008 ) this is an important step toward developing an overarching conception of cosmopolitanism, one that details appropriate courses of action and reform in relation to individuals and institutions in the current global system. The collapsing of GC and cosmopolitanism as synonymous is for Cabrera a mistake. There are clear differences between them, as well as different conceptual inflections within them. Within cosmopolitanism, Cabrera details the institutional cosmopolitanism of Archibugi and Linklater, which is concerned with the creation of a comprehensive network of global governing institutions to achieve just global distributive outcomes; and moral cosmopolitanism, which as we see in Appiah, Pogge, and Parekh is concerned not with institution-building but with assessing the justice of institutions according to how individuals fare in relation to them. Cabrera’s claim is that individual cosmopolitanism should be understood as GC. GC for Cabrera is a moral orientation toward and a claim to membership of the whole of the human community and a theory of citizenship that is fundamentally concerned with appropriate individual action. In other words, Cabrera is offering a theoretical framework for the operationalization of GC which offers guidelines of “right action” for the global human community. “Right action” can be objectively known for Cabrera following the analytical tradition and particularly the liberal thought of John Rawls. On the question of the world state Cabrera equivocates. He argues that GC is the ethical orientation guiding individual action in a global human community and not preparation for a world state, but he nevertheless advocates for a world state because of the biases against cosmopolitan distributive justice inherent in the sovereign state system. For Cabrera GC identifies the very specific duties incumbent on all humankind to promote the creation of an actual global political community up to and including the creation of a world state.

The question of empire is conspicuously absent among these scholars, while other scholars fully implicate Western imperial history in their account of GC. James Tully ( 2014 ) is the only political theorist of GC to pay close attention the role of European empire in constructing, globalizing, and making modular civil citizenship. With a focus on language and meaning as the sites of political contestation, Tully sees GC as articulating a locus of struggle, noting that because of empire, most of the enduring struggles in the history of politics have taken place in and over the language of citizenship and the activities and institutions into which it is woven. GC for Tully is neither fixed nor determinable, as it is for Cabrera; it contains no calculus or universal rule for its application in particular cases. Rather it is a conjunction of “global” and “citizenship” that can be regarded as the linguistic artifact of the innovative tendency of citizens and noncitizens to contest and create something new in the practice of citizenship. Basing his account of “public philosophy” on a philosophy of language drawn from Wittgenstein, Skinner, and Foucault, in which language is constitutive of human social and political relations, Tully regards freedom and democracy as practiced through language. Language is inseparable from cognition, and in practices of meaning-making human beings continually (re)negotiate their circumstances, and in so doing have the capacity to change the language, and in changing the language, change the game. Tully offers a political theory of GC that builds on the open-endedness indicated by Linklater and Falk, and sees in the multitudinous expressions of transnational political activism the possibility of different, more democratic political arrangements. This is consistent with decolonial scholarship in IR, postcolonial scholarship in education, and critical scholarship on sustainability, which argue that the modernistic, dualist language of science is part of the problem in that it hinders the ability of scholars and citizens to conceptualize life differently. To change social reality, they argue, we have to change our language (Shallcross & Robinson, 2006 ), and for many critical scholars GC is part of this conceptual shift.

The Study of GC

Research on the practice of GC can be roughly divided between the normative theoretical and the phenomenological empirical and contains a tension between GC as actually existing and needing to be produced. Scholarship has expanded substantially since the 1990s and moved away from an association with cosmopolitanism toward a direct engagement with GC as a concept and field of study in its own right. Contributions to the field have appeared in Media and Cultural Studies (Khatib, 2003 ; Nash, 2009 ), International Law (Hunter, 1992 ; Torre, 2005 ), Psychology (Reysen & Hackett, 2017 ; Reysen & Katzarska-Miller, 2013 ), and Citizenship Studies (Arneil, 2007 ; Bowden, 2003 ; Soguk, 2014 ), but the bulk of the scholarship appears in International Relations (IR) (residing in roughly the subfields of Globalization, Global Governance, Social Movements, and Global Civil Society) and in educational scholarship (residing in pedagogical scholarship but also emerging interdisciplinary fields where educational scholarship is overlapping with International Political Economy, IR, and International Political Sociology) (Armstrong, 2006 ; Ball, 2012 ; Dale, 2000 ; Desforges, 2004 ). Methodologically, most of the scholarship has been qualitative and interpretive or critical, with a handful of quantitative approaches just emerging in Psychology seeking to measure global citizen attributes, and one study providing a quantitative aggregate account of the appearance of “GC” in textbooks (Buckner & Russell, 2013 ; Katzarska-Miller & Reysen, 2018 ; Reysen & Katzarska-Miller, 2013 ). Debates across much of the scholarship follow an optimistic–pessimistic or normative–critical dichotomy.

Sociological scholarship on globalization going back to the 1990s describes a growing global awareness that can be causally attributed to information communications technologies (ICTs). ICTs play a central role in all accounts of “observable” GC, even if operating in the background as the necessary sufficient conditions for transnational cooperation and mobilization. This sociological approach sees in the massification of communications technology a distribution of symbolic resources that inform how people see themselves and their knowledge of others in time and space. This is in keeping with 20th-century scholarship in the fields of nationalism, communication, and the histories of knowledge which have posited the constitutive nature of communications technology and identity (Anderson, 1983 ; Foucault, 1982 , 2000 ; Lule, 2015 ; Martin, Manns, & Bowe, 2004 ; Norris, 2009 ). For Urry, Pippa Norris, and others, just as national broadcasting can be causally credited with the development of national citizenship, so can ICTs be credited with the rise in global affinities, cosmopolitan worldviews, and self-identification as a global citizen. In addition to transforming the possibilities for transnational interaction, mobilization, and governance and the market across terrestrial space, ICTs enable visibility, the spread of knowledge and shared experiences, the perception of threat, and a sense of the world as a whole. For this approach there is a historical connection between ICTs and democracy dating back to the social upheaval in Europe that went with the introduction of the printing press. When ICTs are global, they enable more political transparency through the identification and exposing of wrongdoing. Harmful backstage behavior can be revealed, put on display, and represented over and over again. This has been done to states and corporations over their environmental and human-rights transgressions and has fuelled the activities of new social movements. Such revelations contribute to the knowledge base of those claiming to be global citizens, and of those being so characterized in the scholarship.

Communications technology is one of the structural factors making it possible to uncouple citizenship from the territorial state. Advances in ICTs have also created the technical capacity to make GC an institutional reality. The volume Debating Transformations of National Citizenship devotes a section to debating the possibilities inherent in blockchain technology to confer a grant of citizenship to all humanity through a universal digital identity. Blockchain technology provides the technological capability, international law provides the global juridical framework (Article 25(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), according to which every citizen should have the right to participate in the conduct of public affairs), and the Sustainable Development Goals articulate a political will and policy framework (goal 16.9 aims to provide a legal identity for all, including birth registration by 2030 ). For optimists, blockchain technology would provide universal recognition of personhood; enhance individual freedom by allowing people to create self-sovereign identities with control over their personal data; mitigate against the increased politicization of citizenship; and could have the benefit of protecting human rights and stateless persons, assisting in the fight against human trafficking, and even mitigate the tendency of states to monetize naturalization (De Filippi, 2018 ). In addition, it contains the possibility for emancipatory movements to mobilize across territorial borders. The creation of multiple cloud communities would allow for experimentation with democratic utopias and would enable a direct global democracy by creating the possibility of a one-person-one-vote participation in global governance (Orgad, 2018 ). By extending decision-making power to individuals and communities that are currently excluded, it contains the potential for the realization of cosmopolitan democracy as envisaged by Linklater and Archibugi. For pessimists, this would require a globalization of communications technology that is not environmentally sustainable and would centralize power in the hands of states and corporations.

Moving beyond technological determinism, a common refrain in the study of GC is that it is organically expressed, manifested and spread by the globalizing of civil society and transnational advocacy networks (TANs) (Armstrong, 2006 ; Carter, 2001 ; Desforges, 2004 ; Meutzelfeldt & Smith, 2002 ). Here, the attribute of causality is not necessarily with the individual, but with the variety of political arrangements that have emerged to address transnational issues. According to April Carter, “amnesty as an organisation can be seen as a collective global citizen” (Carter, 2001 , p. 83). While not all the groups that fall within the designation Global Civil Society (GCS) can be associated with GC, it is the groups which are engaged in political lobbying, policy work, volunteering, campaigning, fundraising, and protest on social justice issues to do with poverty, inequality, and human rights that are regarded as sites for the study of GC because they are ostensibly motivated by identification with the whole of humanity, cosmopolitan values, a concern about injustice, a willingness to act collaboratively and cooperatively. Moreover, their activities are undergirded by and contribute to the operationalization of a universal system of human rights. They assist local populations in making claims against state governments and they make claims against global institutions for redress of problems. Participants in these networks are transnationally mobile through associations which facilitate the production of knowledge, the formation of “epistemic communities,” and consensus therefore around the policy response to the transnational issues around which they are organized (Haas, 1989 , 1992 ).

A circular logic is at play here. Activists who care about social justice issues comprise the personnel of groups which create networks for the purposes of making change. These networks in turn are new forms of association wherein participation engenders the sorts of values and attributes which can be assigned to the global citizen (Pallas, 2012 ). This logic of learning through participation is a common refrain across political theory, constructivist IR, social movements, and education scholarship (Finnemore, 1993 ). These developments in transnational collective action underpin the claim that changing patterns of global governance create new consequences for citizenship. Much of the scholarship regards this as a democratic trend because many of the groups which inhabit these networks are (semi)autonomous from states and governance structures; use knowledge gathered from grassroots and professional experience to highlight global issues to shape public opinion in such a way as to put pressure on states and corporations responsible for abuses; or push global public policy around health, education, and development in the direction of a more equitable distribution and access and inclusion. Even when the policy preferences of TANs make it onto the global agenda (such as happened with educational access and inclusion and GC education via the Sustainable Development Goals), these groups can continue to apply pressure by also monitoring the operation of UN agencies or national compliance with particular international agreements: the Global Education Monitoring Reports and a special issue of Global Policy (volume 10, supplement 1, September 2019 ) are good examples of this. TANs are regarded as strengthening international society and linkages between states (mitigating the structural condition of anarchy initially posed by IR). For scholars, these spaces of activity embody GC by promoting a world order based not on state interests but on human rights, and acting as a vehicle for strengthening the legitimacy of global institutions and international law (Jelin, 2010 ; Shallcross & Robinson, 2006 ). The interaction they create between the bottom-up and top-down in an expanded architecture of global governance divided by policy specialism is evidence of Alexander Wendt’s claim that a world state is inevitable (Wendt, 2003 ).

However, civil-society groups and TANs are not the only nonstate actors laying claim to the label “global citizen.” Corporations and their representative organizations (e.g., the World Economic Forum) are also adopting the label, and the literature on Global Corporate Citizenship cites the same set of circumstances regarding the pressure that globalization has put upon state capacity. In the circumstance of a “global regulatory deficit” that has been created by financing conditions that required the shrinkage of the state, corporations have a choice between exploiting that deficit for gain, or exhibiting “enlightened self-interest” by recognizing that they have social responsibilities as well as rights. Corporations act as global citizens, according to this literature, by assuming responsibilities of a state, such as the provision of public-health programs, education, and protection of human rights through working conditions while operating in countries with repressive regimes. Global corporate citizens engage in self-regulation to ensure the peace and stability required for continued realization of profits (Henderson, 2000 ; Schwab, 2008 ; Sherer & Palazzo, 2008 ). Considering that much of the activism of social movements against neoliberal globalization has been directed against corporations and the global institutions promoting their preferred policy agendas, this raises a question in need of further exploration. How can the site of the trouble provide ostensibly the solution? Should observers be relieved by the corporate recognition of social justice issues when economic nationalism is on the rise, or should it be regarded as an instrumental attempt at co-opting?

Here lies a central cleavage animating both the endorsement and the critiques of GC. Does capitalism underwrite democracy through economic growth, or does it erode democracy by facilitating monopolies which put power and wealth in the hands of a few? For many commentators, the expanded networks of global governance are not democratic, because they are inhabited by powerful actors with asymmetric bargaining power and the ability to ensure that whatever compromises are made do not trouble the logic of the existing system (El Bouhali, 2015 ; Caballero, 2019 ). The spaces inhabited by global citizens are not in fact spaces of negotiation open to all, and particularly as they are formalized and professionalized, they create an elite (Pallas, 2012 ) of what are effectively bureaucratic functionaries of global governance. Moreover, these elites are primarily from the Global North and are criticized for pursuing an elite-led advanced economy agenda for the international system. Structural imbalances are often cited between Southern and Northern participants because participation requires resources and this creates a Western bias (Gaventa & Tandon, 2010 ). Rather than seeing these actors as representing and advocating on behalf of voiceless constituents, Pallas ( 2012 ) sees a moral hazard and a lack of accountability in “global citizens” who propose policy solutions for which they may not bear the costs by intervening in problems that do not affect them directly. Participants may mistake as “global connectedness” what is in effect identity-sharing among elites. In addition, it is the institutional structure and the funding models of GCS, which have long been subjects of critique, that limit the ability of these groups to entreat the public to behave as global citizens (Desforges, 2004 ).

Richard Falk’s 1993 essay “The Making of Global Citizenship” describes the global citizen as “a type of global reformer: an individual who intellectually perceives a better way of organizing the political life of the planet” (Falk, 1993 , p. 41). This brings us to the assumption of causality which individualizes the emergence of GC in a quintessentially modern gesture which sees GC born of individuals who think critically and do not accept the organization of political life as they find it, but instead ask foundational questions and engage in utopian visions. Falk describes GC as “thinking, feeling and acting for the sake of the human species” (Falk, 1993 , p. 20). GC is thus an orientation toward the collective which begins in the individual with a specific kind of attitude, aptitude, and knowledge. Something peculiar is happening with the consolidation of GC discourse and scholarship. With its uniform emphasis on activism, the global-citizen discourse, whether it occurs in international organisations, corporations, global civil society, individuals or scholarship, has the effect of normalizing and shifting the normative orientation around political activism. This is a significant development given the context of the proliferation of political activisms since the 1960s and the wide variety of political mobilizations occurring on both the right and left of the spectrum in the 21st century . Moreover, the global-citizen discourse has the effect of legitimating the transnational agendas of certain activists (Pallas, 2012 ), and has resulted in a significant normative shift within global institutions in favor of the issues first brought to attention by antiglobalization activists of the 1980s and 1990s. This could be regarded with considerable skepticism as a form of co-opting, or with some relief as a welcome salve to chauvinisms of all varieties. Under the rubric of “GC,” the notion that globalizing capital might have any causal connection to political instability, environmental and health catastrophes, and growing inequality is seldom entertained, even as GC’s insertion into the Sustainable Development Goals sees the production of global citizens as the solution to global problems through the production of global “change makers.” Either way, there is a marked tension between two areas of scholarship in education and political science, where one sees in transnational advocacy the existence of global citizens, and the other sees in the globalization of education policy a strategy for their production.

The conceptualization of GC informs how it is studied. Optimistic scholarship observes what it considers to be organic expressions of GC in social movements, transnational advocacy networks, global governance, and among elite actors. Pessimistic scholarship observes the promotion of GC by elites and through private and governance institutions as a hegemonic strategy to contain and displace social movements; to institutionalize an epistemic paradigm which forecloses on critical thinking and non-Western, particularly indigenous knowledges; and to create a political subject which is amenable to globalizing capital (Bowden, 2003 ; Chapman, 2018 ). Across all this scholarship there are differing accounts of causality which traverse assumptions around human agency, social structure, technological change, and social engineering (Wendt, 1987 ). Technological determinant accounts attribute change to communications technology, top-down accounts attribute change to institutions and governance, and bottom-up accounts attribute change to individual and group agency. The latter two are complicated by the now very large field of GC Education, which has emerged from a combination of elite-led and social movement approaches to education in the 20th century . What is common to all is a characterization of GC as a change in the political subject. Despite the variety in conceptualization and definition of GC, the active, collective, and public element is consistent throughout. Across all the scholarship and debate there appear to be two central issues which require more systematic engagement. The first is the assumption that all forms of political activism are politically “progressive” (that is, in favor of human rights, political freedom, democracy, and equality); and the second is the assumption that GC is inherently neoliberal and therefore also inherently imperial.

A continuing blind spot in much of this scholarship is the concurrent rise of the right-wing political mobilization in various locations. This issue is debated in a volume in dialogue with Tully’s essay “On Global Citizenship” (Tully, 2014 ), and forms a substantive limitation in Tully’s account. Tully is overly optimistic that all forms of nonviolent contestation of civil citizenship are aimed at democracy, freedom, human rights, peace, and equality. He does not consider that alongside more “progressive” globally networked forms of activism are equally regressive forms of negotiation for more conservative and chauvinistic aims, sometimes enacted through violent means (Comas, Shrivastava, & Martin, 2015 ). Duncan Bell makes this criticism as well as raising the question of subject formation, which Tully leaves unaddressed (Bell, 2014 ). This is a notable absence in a time when the social engineering of GC is an active multilateral project. Part of this multilateral project is also an attempt to recapture youth mobilization away from the mobilizing tactics of various far-right or terrorist groups (Bersaglio et al., 2015 ; OECD, 2018 ; Sukarieh & Tannock, 2018 ). In the production of the “global citizen,” then, is also a contestation over what counts as politics, and Tully and other global citizen optimists fail to account for the potential weaponization of the political orientation and allegiance of young people.

Equally, Tully’s engagement in favor of GC is in tension with critical scholarship which sees in GC the continuance of an imperial project. Tully’s understanding of empire is reduced to Western European empire (as is it for most scholars critical of the Western tradition, including both postcolonial and decolonial). This is both one-sided and ahistorical and fails to consider the world historical development of empires in the plural and the fact that what Europe colonized at its periphery was, in many cases, other empires (Burbank & Cooper, 2010 ). There is a growing body of scholarship in International Relations (IR) which attempts to grapple in various ways, some more successful than others, with the peculiar absence of the history of empire from the discipline (Barkawi, 2010 ; Blanken, 2012 ; Colas, 2010 ; Dillon Savage, 2010 ; Go, 2011 ; Nexon & Wright, 2007 ; Spruyt, 2016 ); a growing body of scholarship which is calling for disciplinary decolonization (Abdi et al., 2015 ; Apffel-Marglin, 2004 ; Go, 2013 ; Gutierrez et al., 2010 ; Hudson, 2016 ; Taylor, 2012 ); and a growing body of historical scholarship which takes a comparative approach both to empires and to their role in constructing the international system (Burbank & Cooper, 2010 ; Darwin, 2007 ; Alcock et. al., 2001 ). The problem with the GC-is-imperial critique is that it has been made without a systematic engagement with the theoretical and methodological problem that empire poses for the social sciences. Equally, scholarship within IR that has begun to broach this question has done so without contending seriously with what postcolonial scholarship has done to further such an endeavor, or with how the reintroduction of empire poses serious problems for the very foundations of the discipline of political science (Biccum, 2018a ; Barkawi, 2010 ; Barkawi & Laffey, 2002 ; Mitchell, 1991 ). The recognition of empire and state co-constitution, which is made legible by the scholars who (in both history and historical IR) have begun to make empire an inescapable foundation of inquiry, necessitates a denaturalization of the state. Once the nation state is properly historically contextualized as embedded in imperial politics, the cosmopolitan debate over whether individual allegiance and identity is owed to state or humanity becomes remarkably hollow.

But equally, the state is as much a conceptual variable as GC, and a common critique of the methodological nationalism of much Western political thought and of the social sciences is that it has contributed to a normalization and naturalization of the state which is not consistent with the historical facts of the international system (Ferguson & Mansbach, 2010 ; Mitchell, 1991 ). Once this foundational problem that empire poses for how the social sciences have traditionally understood the state is properly engaged, scholars who value democracy, human rights, and justice have no choice but to normatively endorse GC, or perhaps, following Vandana Shiva, Earth Democracy (Shiva, 2005 ). In addition, scholars need to be careful about continuing to brandish critiques of GC under the rubric of “neoliberalism” in an age of hegemonic decline (Biccum, 2020 ). If GC is indeed imperial, this claim must be made with a very robust understanding of what is meant by empire, which is among many other things, after all, also a concept (Biccum, 2018a ). Scholarship on GC needs to continue, as it has begun to do, to empirically map its usage, operationalization, and institutionalization, with a particular focus on how concepts do political work. The field, practice, and use of the concept is growing. Future scholarship should be paying close empirical attention to how, by whom, and to what purposes it is being used while engaging robustly with questions of norms, methods, and the politics of knowledge. Scholars across the different fields and different normative, theoretical, and empirical divides need to begin to speak to one another. Most importantly, scholars need to keep as the focal point of their inquiry how the concept of GC itself raises important foundational questions about how we should live.

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1. Derek Heater acknowledges that similar themes advocating world community and government can be found in the Indian, Chinese, and Japanese intellectual traditions (Heater, 1996 ).

2. This view has been problematized by scholarship occurring at the same time which examines the ways in which globalization has changed the state through the very same transnational governance structures that contemporary scholarship regards as empirical evidence for the existence of GC. For an account of globalization and the state see Clark ( 1999 ).

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Essay on Global Citizenship

Students are often asked to write an essay on Global Citizenship in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Global Citizenship

What is global citizenship.

Global citizenship means seeing yourself as a part of the whole world, not just your country. It’s about caring for people and the planet, no matter where they are. Global citizens work together to solve big problems like poverty and climate change.

Responsibilities of Global Citizens

Being a global citizen means you have duties. You should learn about different cultures, respect the environment, and help others. It’s about making good choices that don’t hurt others around the world.

Benefits of Global Citizenship

When we act as global citizens, we make the world better. We get to understand different people and can work on making peace. It also helps us to solve big problems that affect everyone, like keeping the earth clean and safe.

250 Words Essay on Global Citizenship

Global citizenship is the idea that everyone on our planet is part of a big community. It’s like thinking of the whole world as one big neighborhood. People who believe in global citizenship care about issues that affect everyone, no matter where they live.

Caring for the Earth

One part of being a global citizen is looking after our planet. This means doing things to protect the environment, like recycling or turning off lights to save energy. It’s about keeping the Earth clean and safe for all of us and the animals too.

Helping Each Other

Global citizens also think it’s important to help people in need. This could be by giving money to charities that work all over the world or by learning about different cultures and understanding people who are different from us.

Another big idea in global citizenship is fairness. This means making sure that people everywhere have what they need, like food, water, and a chance to go to school. It’s not fair if some people have too much while others have too little.

Working Together

Finally, global citizenship is about countries and people working together to solve big problems. This can be anything from fighting diseases that spread across countries to making sure everyone has a good place to live.

In short, being a global citizen means caring for our world and the people in it. It’s about learning, sharing, and working together to make the world a better place for everyone.

500 Words Essay on Global Citizenship

Imagine a big school that has students from every part of the world. These students learn together, play together, and help each other. This is a bit like what global citizenship is. Global citizenship means thinking of yourself as a part of one big world community. Instead of just looking after the people in your own town or country, you care about everyone on Earth.

Why is Global Citizenship Important?

Our world is connected in many ways. What happens in one country can affect many others. For example, if the air gets polluted in one place, it can travel to other places and make the air dirty there too. By being global citizens, we can work together to solve big problems like pollution, poverty, and sickness that can touch people everywhere.

Respecting Cultures and People

Global citizens respect and learn about different cultures and people. Every culture has its own special stories, food, and ways of living. When you are a global citizen, you are curious about these differences and you understand that every person is important, no matter where they come from.

Taking Care of the Planet

Our Earth is the only home we have. Global citizens take care of it by doing things like recycling, saving water, and planting trees. We all share the same air, water, and land, so it’s everyone’s job to look after them.

Helping Others

Global citizens try to help people who need it. This can be by giving money to charities that work all over the world or by being kind to someone from another country who moves to your town. When we help each other, the whole world becomes a better place.

Learning and Sharing Knowledge

Being a global citizen also means learning about the world and sharing what you know. You can read books, watch films, or talk to people from different places. Then, you can share what you learn with your friends and family.

Being Active in Your Community

Even though global citizenship is about the whole world, it starts in your own community. You can join groups that clean up parks, help people who are sick, or raise money for good causes. By doing small things where you live, you are being a part of something much bigger.

Global citizenship is like being a friend to the entire world. It means learning, sharing, and caring for others and our planet. Even if you are just one person, you can make a big difference. When we all work together as global citizens, we make the world a happier, healthier, and more peaceful place.

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What Is Global Community

By: Author Valerie Forgeard

Posted on December 22, 2021

Categories Community , Society

We hear more and more about global communities. It’s important to really understand the meaning of ‘global community’ because it gives us the opportunity to gain new perspectives and make connections with people who’re different from ourselves.

Meaning of Global Community

Global and community are two words that belong together.

Global describes the world. It refers to everything, everywhere… the whole planet.

Community refers to people who live in the same area and share common characteristics or interests.

Global community refers to the growing interconnectedness of people around the world.

It’s made up of people from all over the world who’re connected by gender, interests such as technology, economics, global issues, and more.

In the 21st century, “global community” has become a popular buzzword due to the result of globalization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which has led many people to wonder what it actually means to each member of the world community.

The Importance of the Global Community

People who look similar and have similar backgrounds can easily communicate with each other, but when people from different cultures come together, they learn each other’s values and begin to understand each other.

The global community is important because it brings together people from all over the world who share common values and beliefs.

Since we share one planet and one future, we have a responsibility to each other, no matter where we live or how different our cultures are.

Benefits of Global Communities

The benefits of belonging to a global community are numerous.

A community can be a safe place where you can share your thoughts and feelings with people who truly understand what you’re going through.

It can help you find answers to questions you may have been afraid to ask. And it can offer you support in difficult times when you need someone to lean on.

If you’re looking for advice on an issue affecting your life or the lives of your family members, or if you want to discuss a topic that’s important to you, consider joining a global community.

Thanks to social media, joining a community has never been easier.

The Difference Between the Local and the Global Community

The local community is limited by its geographic location, while members of a global community live in different places, making it difficult to determine their exact location.

People in a local community may be connected by personal relationships or shared experiences, but they’re still connected by the fact that they live in close proximity to each other.

A global community may span the globe and be connected by common interests and goals. While residents of a small town may know each other on a more personal level, members of a global community may not know each other on a personal level, but they’re connected by their shared interests.

Global communities are mostly connected by the Internet; therefore, everything that holds them together is online, and occasionally physical: they typically use online forums, email lists, and chat rooms to facilitate communication among members.

Because a local community is an area of shared interest within a geographic area, local community members often prefer to meet in person rather than communicate via email, phone calls, or other digital means of communication.

Today, however, they function much like global communities and also use social media to communicate.

10 Types of Global Communities

1. virtual communities.

In this type of community, users interact via the Internet on websites such as Facebook and Twitter.

2. Physical Communities

This type involves real-world places where people can meet to enjoy the company of others or participate in activities such as sports, hobbies, and entertainment.

3. Business Communities

These are groups that bring together people who’ve common interests or needs related to business, such as professionals working in the same field, people looking for potential customers or clients, collaboration, and innovation.

4. Special Interest Communities

This is a group of people who’re interested in a particular topic or activity. They usually gather with others who share their interest to form a civil society.

5. Political Communities

This type consists of people interested in politics and social issues related to governments in both developed and developing countries. They form political parties and lobbies to try to bring about change in governments.

6. Religious Communities

These groups form around specific religious beliefs and usually have places where members can meet to worship.

7. Community Organizations

Throughout the world, there are various groups in the international community that are addressing the global problems of the world today.

These include political bodies such as the United Nations, cultural groups such as UNESCO, and economic associations such as the G20. Organizations and charities that are part of global communities are invited to raise awareness of global issues and help make a positive impact on a global level.

8. Youth Communities

Youth or student communities and groups can be a great way for young people to make new friends, find jobs, and participate in events. Usually, these are school, college, or university communities.

9. Senior Communities

The purpose of these communities is to connect with other citizens who share common interests – often those that revolve around retirement or other events later in life.

10. Gender Communities

The goal of gender communities is to address global problems related to gender and to promote diversity.

For example, women’s communities may discuss women’s empowerment in the workplace, men’s groups may discuss custody disputes, and LGBT groups may discuss their acceptance in society.

Size of Global Communities

The size of a global community depends on how long it’s existed and how many members it’s.

Established communities tend to grow larger than newer ones.

It’s not uncommon for some global communities to have millions of members, while others may have only thousands or even only hundreds.

Many factors influence the growth and development of a global community, including its purpose, the support it receives, and the tools the Internet provides.

Joining a Global Community

Many global communities are free to join.

It’s best to find a community that matches your interests and goals. Here are some tips:

Choose a Community That Fits You

You may be interested in a topic for which there are many communities, such as social media, marketing, or health and fitness.

If you feel that none of the available communities fit your needs exactly, start your own! If you try to join an existing community and it doesn’t feel right, start your own!

Spend some time on the site before jumping into the discussion forums. Look at what people are saying and how they’re saying it.

Make sure the tone is consistent with what you want from a community.

Get Involved

Interact with community members – be it in Meetup groups or in private chats.

The world as a whole is made up of people with different perspectives, educational programs, and complicated international relationships, but in some ways, we’re all connected and can learn a lot from each other.

Global education: How to transform school systems?

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Emiliana vegas and emiliana vegas former co-director - center for universal education , former senior fellow - global economy and development @emivegasv rebecca winthrop rebecca winthrop director - center for universal education , senior fellow - global economy and development @rebeccawinthrop.

November 17, 2020

• 12 min read

This essay is part of “ Reimagining the global economy: Building back better in a post-COVID-19 world ,” a collection of 12 essays presenting new ideas to guide policies and shape debates in a post-COVID-19 world.

Even before COVID-19 left as many as 1.5 billion students out of school in early 2020, there was a global consensus that education systems in too many countries were not delivering the quality education needed to ensure that all have the skills necessary to thrive. 1 It is the poorest children across the globe who carry the heaviest burden, with pre-pandemic analysis estimating that 90 percent of children in low-income countries, 50 percent of children in middle-income countries, and 30 percent of children in high-income countries fail to master the basic secondary-level skills needed to thrive in work and life. 2  

Analysis in mid-April 2020—in the early throes of the pandemic—found that less than 25 percent of low-income countries were providing any type of remote learning, while close to 90 percent of high-income countries were. 3 On top of cross-country differences in access to remote learning, within-country differences are also staggering. For example, during the COVID-19 school closures, 1 in 10 of the poorest children in the U.S. had little or no access to technology for learning. 4

Yet, for a few young people in wealthy communities around the globe, schooling has never been better than during the pandemic. They are taught in their homes with a handful of their favorite friends by a teacher hired by their parents. 5  Some parents have connected via social media platforms to form learning pods that instruct only a few students at a time with agreed-upon teaching schedules and activities.

While the learning experiences for these particular children may be good in and of themselves, they represent a worrisome trend for the world: the massive acceleration of education inequality. 6

Emerging from this global pandemic with a stronger public education system is an ambitious vision, and one that will require both financial and human resources.

The silver lining is that COVID-19 has resulted in public recognition of schools’ essential caretaking role in society and parents’ gratitude for teachers, their skills, and their invaluable role in student well-being.

It is hard to imagine there will be another moment in history when the central role of schooling in the economic, social, and political prosperity and stability of nations is so obvious and well understood by the general population. The very fact that schools enable parents to work outside the home is hitting home to millions of families amid global school closures. Now is the time to chart a vision for how education can emerge stronger from this global crisis and help reduce education inequality.

Indeed, we believe that strong and inclusive public education systems are essential to the short- and long-term recovery of society and that there is an opportunity to leapfrog toward powered-up schools.

A powered-up school, one that well serves the educational needs of children and youth, is one that puts a strong public school at the center of the community and leverages the most effective partnerships to help learners grow and develop a broad range of competencies and skills. It would recognize and adapt to the learning that takes place beyond its walls, regularly assessing students’ skills and tailoring learning opportunities to meet students at their skill level. New allies in children’s learning would complement and assist teachers, and could support children’s healthy mental and physical development. It quite literally would be the school at the center of the community that powers student learning and development using every path possible (Figure 12.1).

While this vision is aspirational, it is by no means impractical. Schools at the center of a community ecosystem of learning and support are an idea whose time has come, and some of the emerging practices amid COVID-19, such as empowering parents to support their children’s education, should be sustained after the pandemic subsides.

It is hard to imagine there will be another moment in history when the central role of schooling in the economic, social, and political prosperity and stability of nations is so obvious and well understood by the general population.

The way forward

To achieve this vision, we propose five actions to seize the moment and transform education systems (focusing on pre-primary through secondary school) to better serve all children and youth, especially the most disadvantaged.

1. Leverage public schools and put them at the center of education systems given their essential role in equalizing opportunity across society

By having the mandate to serve all children and youth regardless of background, public schools in many countries can bring together individuals from diverse backgrounds and needs, providing the social benefit of allowing individuals to grow up with a set of common values and knowledge that can make communities more cohesive and unified. 7

Schools play a crucial role in fostering the skills individuals need to succeed in a rapidly changing labor market, 8 play a major role in equalizing opportunities for individuals of diverse backgrounds, and address a variety of social needs that serve communities, regions, and entire nations. While a few private schools can and do play these multiple roles, public education is the main conduit for doing so at scale and hence should be at the center of any effort to build back better.

2. Focus on the instructional core, the heart of the teaching and learning process

Using the instructional core—or focusing on the interactions among educators, learners, and educational materials to improve student learning 9 —can help identify what types of new strategies or innovations could become community-based supports in children’s learning journey. Indeed, even after only a few months of experimentation around the globe on keeping learning going amid a pandemic, some clear strategies have the potential, if continued, to contribute to a powered-up school, and many of them involve engaging learners, educators, and parents in new ways using some form of technology.

3. Deploy education technology to power up schools in a way that meets teaching and learning needs and prevent technology from becoming a costly distraction

After COVID-19, one thing is certain: School systems that are best prepared to use education technology effectively will be best positioned to continue offering quality education in the face of school closures.

Other recent research 10 by one of us finds that technology can help improve learning by supporting the crucial interactions in the instructional core through the following ways: (1) scaling up quality instruction (by, for example, prerecorded lessons of high-quality teaching); (2) facilitating differentiated instruction (through, for example, computer-adaptive learning or live one-on-one tutoring); (3) expanding opportunities for student practice; and (4) increasing student engagement (through, for example, videos and games).

4. Forge stronger, more trusting relationships between parents and teachers

When a respectful relationship among parents, teachers, families, and schools happens, children learn and thrive. This occurs by inviting families to be allies in children’s learning by using easy-to-understand information communicated through mechanisms that adapt to parents’ schedules and that provide parents with an active but feasible role. The nature of the invitation and the relationship is what is so essential to bringing parents on board.

COVID-19 is an opportunity for parents and families to gain insight into the skill that is involved in teaching and for teachers and schools to realize what powerful allies parents can be. Parents around the world are not interested in becoming their child’s teacher, but they are, based on several large-scale surveys, 11 asking to be engaged in a different, more active way in the future. One of the most important insights for supporting a powered-up school is challenging the mindset of those in the education sector who think that parents and families with the least opportunities are not capable or willing to help their children learn.

5. Embrace the principles of improvement science required to evaluate, course correct, document, and scale new approaches that can help power up schools over time

The speed and depth of change mean that it will be essential to take an iterative approach to learning what works, for whom, and under what enabling conditions. In other words, this is a moment to employ the principles of improvement science. 12 Traditional research methods will need to be complemented by real-time documentation, reflection, quick feedback loops, and course correction. Rapid sharing of early insights and testing of potential change ideas will need to come alongside the longer-term rigorous reviews.

Adapting the scaling strategy is especially challenging, requiring not only timely data, a thorough understanding of the context, and space for reflection, but also willingness and capacity to act on this learning and make changes accordingly.

Related Content

Homi Kharas, John W. McArthur

Anthony F. Pipa, Max Bouchet

Kemal Derviş

Emerging from this global pandemic with a stronger public education system is an ambitious vision, and one that will require both financial and human resources. But such a vision is essential, and that amid the myriad of decisions education leaders are making every day, it can guide the future. With the dire consequences of the pandemic hitting the most vulnerable young people the hardest, it is tempting to revert to a global education narrative that privileges access to school above all else. This, however, would be a mistake. A powered-up public school in every community is what the world’s children deserve, and indeed is possible if everyone can collectively work together to harness the opportunities presented by this crisis to truly leapfrog education forward.

• This essay is based on a longer paper titled “Beyond reopening schools: How education can emerge stronger than before COVID-19” by the same authors, which can be found here: https://www.brookings.edu/research/beyond-reopening-schools-how-education-can-emerge-stronger-than-before-covid-19/ .
• ”The Learning Generation: Investing in Education for a Changing World.” The International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity. https://report.educationcommission.org/report/ .
• Vegas, Emiliana. “School Closures, Government Responses, and Learning Inequality around the World during COVID-19.” Brookings Institution, April 14, 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/research/school-closures-government-responses-and-learning-inequality-around-the-world-during-covid-19/.
• “U.S. Census Bureau Releases Household Pulse Survey Results.” United States Census Bureau, 2020, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/household-pulse-results.html .
• Moyer, Melinda Wenner. “Pods, Microschools and Tutors: Can Parents Solve the Education Crisis on Their Own?” The New York Times. January 22, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/parenting/school-pods-coronavirus.html.
• Samuels, Christina A., and Arianna Prothero. “Could the ‘Pandemic Pod’ Be a Lifeline for Parents or a Threat to Equity?” Education Week. August 18, 2020. https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/07/29/could-the-pandemic-pod-be-a-lifeline.html.
• Christakis, Erika. “Americans Have Given Up on Public Schools. That’s a Mistake.” The Atlantic. September 11, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-war-on-public-schools/537903/.
• Levin, Henry M. “Education as a Public and Private Good.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 6, no. 4 (1987): 628-41.
• David Cohen and Deborah Loewenberg Ball, who originated the idea of the instructional core, used the terms teachers, students, and content. The OECD’s initiative on “Innovative Learning Environments” later adapted the framework using the terms educators, learners, and resources to represent educational materials and added a new element of content to represent the choices around skills and competencies and how to assess them. Here we have pulled from elements that we like from both frameworks, using the term instructional core to describe the relationships between educators, learners, and content and added parents.
• Alejandro J. Ganimian, Emiliana Vegas, and Frederick M. Hess, “Realizing the promise: How can education technology improve learning for all?” Brookings Institution, September 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/essay/realizing-the-promise-how-can-education-technology-improve-learning-for-all/.
• “Parents 2020: COVID-19 Closures: A Redefining Moment for Students, Parents & Schools.” Heroes, Learning, 2020. https://r50gh2ss1ic2mww8s3uvjvq1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/LH_2020-Parent-Survey-Partner-1.pdf . 
• “The Six Core Principles of Improvement.” The Six Core Principles of Improvement. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. August 18, 2020. https://www.carnegiefoundation.org/our-ideas/six-core-principles-improvement/ . 

K-12 Education

Global Economy and Development

Center for Universal Education

Amna Qayyum, Claudia Hui

March 7, 2024

February 1, 2024

Elyse Painter, Emily Gustafsson-Wright

January 5, 2024

World Citizen Essay Contest

Description.

Since 1998, the World Affairs Council of Seattle's Global Classroom has been dedicated to ensuring that youth are included in conversations surrounding critical global issues. Global Classroom believes that all students, youth, and the adults and mentors influencing their development, should have access to tools, materials, opportunities, and information to help them better understand the interconnectedness of our world. One way Global Classroom supports youth in increasing their global IQ, is through our annual World Citizen Essay Contest (WCEC).

Each spring, the World Affairs Council hosts the WCEC for third through twelfth graders. The goal of the contest is to promote discussion among students, teachers, families, and community members about the ways that individuals can affect positive change in the global community.  The contest lends the opportunity for students to engage in conversations about critical world issues with their peers, teachers, and families and allows them to gain confidence in expressing their thoughts in writing by submitting their work to a panel of community judges from both the business and education communities. Many teachers use the WCEC as a way to engage their students in real life global issues. 

Global Classroom's ability to implement this project is anchored in its on-going work connecting Washington State educators with the necessary resources they need to teach their students about timely world issues that affect both our Puget Sound region and the world. Education about global issues is critical for the students so that they can better understand the community in which they live as well as communities in other places. Global Classroom programs like the World Citizen Essay Contest cultivate the cognitive skills necessary for students to develop and exercise critical thinking and communication skills. This event is inspired by the knowledge that our young people are eager for first-hand experiences with global issues – experiences that give them authentic opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge about international issues and direct exposure to those issues that affect our world today. The more students engage, the more they know, and the more they know, the better citizens they will be.

Interested in learning more? Check out our past World Citizen Essay Contests and winners! The 2022 essay contest prompt is finalized and we are excited to have youth across Washington State participate and speak on issues important to them and to the world. For details on the 2023 WCEC, checkout our 2024 World Citizen Essay Contest  page . Let's keep uplifting our youth!

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How to Write the Community Essay – Guide with Examples (2023-24)

September 6, 2023

Students applying to college this year will inevitably confront the community essay. In fact, most students will end up responding to several community essay prompts for different schools. For this reason, you should know more than simply how to approach the community essay as a genre. Rather, you will want to learn how to decipher the nuances of each particular prompt, in order to adapt your response appropriately. In this article, we’ll show you how to do just that, through several community essay examples. These examples will also demonstrate how to avoid cliché and make the community essay authentically and convincingly your own.

Emphasis on Community

Do keep in mind that inherent in the word “community” is the idea of multiple people. The personal statement already provides you with a chance to tell the college admissions committee about yourself as an individual. The community essay, however, suggests that you depict yourself among others. You can use this opportunity to your advantage by showing off interpersonal skills, for example. Or, perhaps you wish to relate a moment that forged important relationships. This in turn will indicate what kind of connections you’ll make in the classroom with college peers and professors.

Apart from comprising numerous people, a community can appear in many shapes and sizes. It could be as small as a volleyball team, or as large as a diaspora. It could fill a town soup kitchen, or spread across five boroughs. In fact, due to the internet, certain communities today don’t even require a physical place to congregate. Communities can form around a shared identity, shared place, shared hobby, shared ideology, or shared call to action. They can even arise due to a shared yet unforeseen circumstance.

What is the Community Essay All About?             

In a nutshell, the community essay should exhibit three things:

• An aspect of yourself, 2. in the context of a community you belonged to, and 3. how this experience may shape your contribution to the community you’ll join in college.

It may look like a fairly simple equation: 1 + 2 = 3. However, each college will word their community essay prompt differently, so it’s important to look out for additional variables. One college may use the community essay as a way to glimpse your core values. Another may use the essay to understand how you would add to diversity on campus. Some may let you decide in which direction to take it—and there are many ways to go!

To get a better idea of how the prompts differ, let’s take a look at some real community essay prompts from the current admission cycle.

Sample 2023-2024 Community Essay Prompts

1) brown university.

“Students entering Brown often find that making their home on College Hill naturally invites reflection on where they came from. Share how an aspect of your growing up has inspired or challenged you, and what unique contributions this might allow you to make to the Brown community. (200-250 words)”

A close reading of this prompt shows that Brown puts particular emphasis on place. They do this by using the words “home,” “College Hill,” and “where they came from.” Thus, Brown invites writers to think about community through the prism of place. They also emphasize the idea of personal growth or change, through the words “inspired or challenged you.” Therefore, Brown wishes to see how the place you grew up in has affected you. And, they want to know how you in turn will affect their college community.

“NYU was founded on the belief that a student’s identity should not dictate the ability for them to access higher education. That sense of opportunity for all students, of all backgrounds, remains a part of who we are today and a critical part of what makes us a world-class university. Our community embraces diversity, in all its forms, as a cornerstone of the NYU experience.

We would like to better understand how your experiences would help us to shape and grow our diverse community. Please respond in 250 words or less.”

Here, NYU places an emphasis on students’ “identity,” “backgrounds,” and “diversity,” rather than any physical place. (For some students, place may be tied up in those ideas.) Furthermore, while NYU doesn’t ask specifically how identity has changed the essay writer, they do ask about your “experience.” Take this to mean that you can still recount a specific moment, or several moments, that work to portray your particular background. You should also try to link your story with NYU’s values of inclusivity and opportunity.

3) University of Washington

“Our families and communities often define us and our individual worlds. Community might refer to your cultural group, extended family, religious group, neighborhood or school, sports team or club, co-workers, etc. Describe the world you come from and how you, as a product of it, might add to the diversity of the UW. (300 words max) Tip: Keep in mind that the UW strives to create a community of students richly diverse in cultural backgrounds, experiences, values and viewpoints.”

UW ’s community essay prompt may look the most approachable, for they help define the idea of community. You’ll notice that most of their examples (“families,” “cultural group, extended family, religious group, neighborhood”…) place an emphasis on people. This may clue you in on their desire to see the relationships you’ve made. At the same time, UW uses the words “individual” and “richly diverse.” They, like NYU, wish to see how you fit in and stand out, in order to boost campus diversity.

Writing Your First Community Essay

Begin by picking which community essay you’ll write first. (For practical reasons, you’ll probably want to go with whichever one is due earliest.) Spend time doing a close reading of the prompt, as we’ve done above. Underline key words. Try to interpret exactly what the prompt is asking through these keywords.

Next, brainstorm. I recommend doing this on a blank piece of paper with a pencil. Across the top, make a row of headings. These might be the communities you’re a part of, or the components that make up your identity. Then, jot down descriptive words underneath in each column—whatever comes to you. These words may invoke people and experiences you had with them, feelings, moments of growth, lessons learned, values developed, etc. Now, narrow in on the idea that offers the richest material and that corresponds fully with the prompt.

Lastly, write! You’ll definitely want to describe real moments, in vivid detail. This will keep your essay original, and help you avoid cliché. However, you’ll need to summarize the experience and answer the prompt succinctly, so don’t stray too far into storytelling mode.

How To Adapt Your Community Essay

Once your first essay is complete, you’ll need to adapt it to the other colleges involving community essays on your list. Again, you’ll want to turn to the prompt for a close reading, and recognize what makes this prompt different from the last. For example, let’s say you’ve written your essay for UW about belonging to your swim team, and how the sports dynamics shaped you. Adapting that essay to Brown’s prompt could involve more of a focus on place. You may ask yourself, how was my swim team in Alaska different than the swim teams we competed against in other states?

Once you’ve adapted the content, you’ll also want to adapt the wording to mimic the prompt. For example, let’s say your UW essay states, “Thinking back to my years in the pool…” As you adapt this essay to Brown’s prompt, you may notice that Brown uses the word “reflection.” Therefore, you might change this sentence to “Reflecting back on my years in the pool…” While this change is minute, it cleverly signals to the reader that you’ve paid attention to the prompt, and are giving that school your full attention.

What to Avoid When Writing the Community Essay  

• Avoid cliché. Some students worry that their idea is cliché, or worse, that their background or identity is cliché. However, what makes an essay cliché is not the content, but the way the content is conveyed. This is where your voice and your descriptions become essential.
• Avoid giving too many examples. Stick to one community, and one or two anecdotes arising from that community that allow you to answer the prompt fully.
• Don’t exaggerate or twist facts. Sometimes students feel they must make themselves sound more “diverse” than they feel they are. Luckily, diversity is not a feeling. Likewise, diversity does not simply refer to one’s heritage. If the prompt is asking about your identity or background, you can show the originality of your experiences through your actions and your thinking.

Community Essay Examples and Analysis

Brown university community essay example.

I used to hate the NYC subway. I’ve taken it since I was six, going up and down Manhattan, to and from school. By high school, it was a daily nightmare. Spending so much time underground, underneath fluorescent lighting, squashed inside a rickety, rocking train car among strangers, some of whom wanted to talk about conspiracy theories, others who had bedbugs or B.O., or who manspread across two seats, or bickered—it wore me out. The challenge of going anywhere seemed absurd. I dreaded the claustrophobia and disgruntlement.

Yet the subway also inspired my understanding of community. I will never forget the morning I saw a man, several seats away, slide out of his seat and hit the floor. The thump shocked everyone to attention. What we noticed: he appeared drunk, possibly homeless. I was digesting this when a second man got up and, through a sort of awkward embrace, heaved the first man back into his seat. The rest of us had stuck to subway social codes: don’t step out of line. Yet this second man’s silent actions spoke loudly. They said, “I care.”

That day I realized I belong to a group of strangers. What holds us together is our transience, our vulnerabilities, and a willingness to assist. This community is not perfect but one in motion, a perpetual work-in-progress. Now I make it my aim to hold others up. I plan to contribute to the Brown community by helping fellow students and strangers in moments of precariousness.    

Brown University Community Essay Example Analysis

Here the student finds an original way to write about where they come from. The subway is not their home, yet it remains integral to ideas of belonging. The student shows how a community can be built between strangers, in their responsibility toward each other. The student succeeds at incorporating key words from the prompt (“challenge,” “inspired” “Brown community,” “contribute”) into their community essay.

UW Community Essay Example

I grew up in Hawaii, a world bound by water and rich in diversity. In school we learned that this sacred land was invaded, first by Captain Cook, then by missionaries, whalers, traders, plantation owners, and the U.S. government. My parents became part of this problematic takeover when they moved here in the 90s. The first community we knew was our church congregation. At the beginning of mass, we shook hands with our neighbors. We held hands again when we sang the Lord’s Prayer. I didn’t realize our church wasn’t “normal” until our diocese was informed that we had to stop dancing hula and singing Hawaiian hymns. The order came from the Pope himself.

Eventually, I lost faith in God and organized institutions. I thought the banning of hula—an ancient and pure form of expression—seemed medieval, ignorant, and unfair, given that the Hawaiian religion had already been stamped out. I felt a lack of community and a distrust for any place in which I might find one. As a postcolonial inhabitant, I could never belong to the Hawaiian culture, no matter how much I valued it. Then, I was shocked to learn that Queen Ka’ahumanu herself had eliminated the Kapu system, a strict code of conduct in which women were inferior to men. Next went the Hawaiian religion. Queen Ka’ahumanu burned all the temples before turning to Christianity, hoping this religion would offer better opportunities for her people.

Community Essay (Continued)

I’m not sure what to make of this history. Should I view Queen Ka’ahumanu as a feminist hero, or another failure in her islands’ tragedy? Nothing is black and white about her story, but she did what she thought was beneficial to her people, regardless of tradition. From her story, I’ve learned to accept complexity. I can disagree with institutionalized religion while still believing in my neighbors. I am a product of this place and their presence. At UW, I plan to add to campus diversity through my experience, knowing that diversity comes with contradictions and complications, all of which should be approached with an open and informed mind.

UW Community Essay Example Analysis

This student also manages to weave in words from the prompt (“family,” “community,” “world,” “product of it,” “add to the diversity,” etc.). Moreover, the student picks one of the examples of community mentioned in the prompt, (namely, a religious group,) and deepens their answer by addressing the complexity inherent in the community they’ve been involved in. While the student displays an inner turmoil about their identity and participation, they find a way to show how they’d contribute to an open-minded campus through their values and intellectual rigor.

What’s Next

For more on supplemental essays and essay writing guides, check out the following articles:

• How to Write the Why This Major Essay + Example
• How to Write the Overcoming Challenges Essay + Example
• How to Start a College Essay – 12 Techniques and Tips
• College Essay

Kaylen Baker

With a BA in Literary Studies from Middlebury College, an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University, and a Master’s in Translation from Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, Kaylen has been working with students on their writing for over five years. Previously, Kaylen taught a fiction course for high school students as part of Columbia Artists/Teachers, and served as an English Language Assistant for the French National Department of Education. Kaylen is an experienced writer/translator whose work has been featured in Los Angeles Review, Hybrid, San Francisco Bay Guardian, France Today, and Honolulu Weekly, among others.

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How to Write the “Community” and “Issue” Yale Essays

This article was written based on the information and opinions presented by Hale Jaeger in a CollegeVine livestream. You can watch the full livestream for more info. 

What’s Covered

The “community” essay: choosing a community, structuring the “community” essay, the “issue” essay: choosing your issue, issues to avoid, structuring the “issue” essay.

In this article, we discuss strategies for writing Yale University ’s “Community” and “Issue” supplemental essays. Applicants using the Common App or Coalition Application to apply to Yale are required to choose one of these two prompts and respond to it in 400 words or fewer. The first prompt is the “Issue” essay prompt, which reads:

Yale carries out its mission “through the free exchange of ideas in an ethical, interdependent, and diverse community.” Reflect on a time when you exchanged ideas about an important issue with someone holding an opposing view. How did the experience lead you either to change your opinion or to sharpen your reasons for holding onto it? (400 words)

The second prompt is the “Community” essay prompt:

Reflect on a time when you have worked to enhance a community to which you feel connected. Why have these efforts been meaningful to you? You may define community however you like. (400 words)

In this article, we discuss choosing topics for each of these essays and strategies to structure them.

The Yale “Community” essay prompt clearly states that you can define community however you wish, which means you can choose to write about any kind of community that you feel you are a member of. When considering potential communities, start by brainstorming any groups you are part of that have defined boundaries, such as your town, school, team, or religious organization.

There are also informal communities that you could choose from, such as your friend group, family, coworkers, or neighborhood. Even though these groups have less of a formal definition, they are still communities. What matters most is that the community that you choose is important to you, that you have contributed to it, and that you have learned something from it.

When structuring this essay, think about it in three sections. The first introduces the community, the second demonstrates your contributions to the community, and the third explains what the community has given and taught you. As you write, keep in mind that this essay is a two-way street; you want to show what you have given to your community and what it has given you.

Introduce the Community

The first step in writing this essay is to introduce the community. Explain who is part of the community and what the community is like. Highlight the community’s structure by demonstrating how you are part of it and how you interact with your peers, superiors, or inferiors within the group. It is also important to depict the community’s dynamic in this part of the essay. For example, is it fun, relaxed, and loving, or is it rigorous, challenging, and thought provoking? 

Show What You’ve Contributed

The next section of this essay should discuss your engagement with this community and what you’ve contributed to it. Consider what you’ve done, what initiatives you’ve brought to the community, and what your role is within it. You can also highlight anything that you had to give up to be part of the community.

Show What You’ve Learned

The last part of this essay should discuss what you have gained and learned from this community. For this portion, consider things that the community has given and taught you, as well as ways that it has helped you grow. Think about how this community has shaped who you are and who you are becoming.

The other prompt option is the “Issue” essay. The first step for this one is to define what your issue is. It doesn’t matter what you choose, as long as it’s something that has enough nuance for you to talk about it in a complex and intelligent way.

Make sure it’s an issue of some relevance to you; otherwise, it will come across as dispassionate. As you write this essay, you should show that you are somebody who cares about an issue that they think is significant. 

Grand Issues

When selecting an issue, you can either choose a grand one or a local one. Grand issues are big, unsolved problems that are common in society, such as cancer, homelessness, or food insecurity. If you do choose a grand issue, remind yourself of its personal importance. While grand issues are full of nuance, they may lack personal meaning. Examples of personal connections to grand issues could be if you have encountered homelessness, lived with food insecurity, or have lost someone to cancer.

Local Issues

Another topic option is to write about an issue that is local. For example, maybe your high school has a teaching staff that doesn’t represent the diversity of the student body. While this is not a global issue, it’s something that strongly affects you and your community. 

Perhaps you live in a town that is directly suffering from the opioid crisis, or you have divorced parents and have started an activist group for children of divorced parents. Both of these examples of local issues also have personal importance. 

When choosing a topic to write about, avoid issues that you don’t have any connection to and that aren’t personally important. These are often problems that are too grand and can’t be made personal, such as world peace. 

Another category of issues to avoid is anything that doesn’t align with Yale’s values. Yale, like most universities in the United States, generally has a liberal lean. As such, it is likely not in your best interest to write a strong defense of socially conservative values. While there are values that you are free to hold and express—and Yale welcomes people of all backgrounds and ideologies—this essay is not necessarily the best place to express them.

You are most likely applying to Yale because it’s a place that you want to be and have something in common with. This essay is a great opportunity to emphasize the values that you share with the university rather than the things that divide you. Since a reader only has five to seven minutes to go over your entire application, you don’t want them to come away with the sense that you are somebody who won’t thrive at Yale.

Define the Issue and Highlight Past Experiences

When writing the “Issue” essay, start by identifying the issue and sharing how you came across it. Then, provide insight into why it is meaningful to you and your relationship with it.

Next, show the reader how you have already engaged with the problem by detailing your past with the issue. 

Discuss Future Plans to Approach the Issue

After this, you can look forward and discuss your future with this issue. A great strategy is to write about how your Yale education will address the problem and how your field of study relates to it. You can also highlight any Yale-specific programs or opportunities that will give you insight or context for tackling the issue. 

Alternatively, if there is something about this issue that Yale’s academic flexibility will enable you to explore, you can share that in this part of the essay. For example, maybe you are interested in health policy and plan to take classes in the sciences. You also want to take classes in the history of health, science, and medicine, as well as political science and economics courses, which you plan to utilize to write new healthcare policies.

Another option is to focus on an aspect of Yale’s community, such as peers, professors, or mentors who will help develop your ability to navigate the issue. Ultimately, you want to demonstrate in this essay that what (and how) you learn at Yale will prepare you to take action and move forward with confronting your issue in the future.

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, how to write a great community service essay.

College Admissions , Extracurriculars

Are you applying to a college or a scholarship that requires a community service essay? Do you know how to write an essay that will impress readers and clearly show the impact your work had on yourself and others?

Read on to learn step-by-step instructions for writing a great community service essay that will help you stand out and be memorable.

What Is a Community Service Essay? Why Do You Need One?

A community service essay is an essay that describes the volunteer work you did and the impact it had on you and your community. Community service essays can vary widely depending on specific requirements listed in the application, but, in general, they describe the work you did, why you found the work important, and how it benefited people around you.

Community service essays are typically needed for two reasons:

#1: To Apply to College

• Some colleges require students to write community service essays as part of their application or to be eligible for certain scholarships.
• You may also choose to highlight your community service work in your personal statement.

#2: To Apply for Scholarships

• Some scholarships are specifically awarded to students with exceptional community service experiences, and many use community service essays to help choose scholarship recipients.
• Green Mountain College offers one of the most famous of these scholarships. Their "Make a Difference Scholarship" offers full tuition, room, and board to students who have demonstrated a significant, positive impact through their community service

Getting Started With Your Essay

In the following sections, I'll go over each step of how to plan and write your essay. I'll also include sample excerpts for you to look through so you can get a better idea of what readers are looking for when they review your essay.

Step 1: Know the Essay Requirements

Before your start writing a single word, you should be familiar with the essay prompt. Each college or scholarship will have different requirements for their essay, so make sure you read these carefully and understand them.

Specific things to pay attention to include:

• Length requirement
• Application deadline
• The main purpose or focus of the essay
• If the essay should follow a specific structure

Below are three real community service essay prompts. Read through them and notice how much they vary in terms of length, detail, and what information the writer should include.

From the Equitable Excellence Scholarship:

"Describe your outstanding achievement in depth and provide the specific planning, training, goals, and steps taken to make the accomplishment successful. Include details about your role and highlight leadership you provided. Your essay must be a minimum of 350 words but not more than 600 words."

From the Laura W. Bush Traveling Scholarship:

"Essay (up to 500 words, double spaced) explaining your interest in being considered for the award and how your proposed project reflects or is related to both UNESCO's mandate and U.S. interests in promoting peace by sharing advances in education, science, culture, and communications."

From the LULAC National Scholarship Fund:

"Please type or print an essay of 300 words (maximum) on how your academic studies will contribute to your personal & professional goals. In addition, please discuss any community service or extracurricular activities you have been involved in that relate to your goals."

Step 2: Brainstorm Ideas

Even after you understand what the essay should be about, it can still be difficult to begin writing. Answer the following questions to help brainstorm essay ideas. You may be able to incorporate your answers into your essay.

• What community service activity that you've participated in has meant the most to you?
• What is your favorite memory from performing community service?
• Why did you decide to begin community service?
• What made you decide to volunteer where you did?
• How has your community service changed you?
• How has your community service helped others?
• How has your community service affected your plans for the future?

You don't need to answer all the questions, but if you find you have a lot of ideas for one of two of them, those may be things you want to include in your essay.

Writing Your Essay

How you structure your essay will depend on the requirements of the scholarship or school you are applying to. You may give an overview of all the work you did as a volunteer, or highlight a particularly memorable experience. You may focus on your personal growth or how your community benefited.

Regardless of the specific structure requested, follow the guidelines below to make sure your community service essay is memorable and clearly shows the impact of your work.

Samples of mediocre and excellent essays are included below to give you a better idea of how you should draft your own essay.

Step 1: Hook Your Reader In

You want the person reading your essay to be interested, so your first sentence should hook them in and entice them to read more. A good way to do this is to start in the middle of the action. Your first sentence could describe you helping build a house, releasing a rescued animal back to the wild, watching a student you tutored read a book on their own, or something else that quickly gets the reader interested. This will help set your essay apart and make it more memorable.

Compare these two opening sentences:

"I have volunteered at the Wishbone Pet Shelter for three years."

"The moment I saw the starving, mud-splattered puppy brought into the shelter with its tail between its legs, I knew I'd do whatever I could to save it."

The first sentence is a very general, bland statement. The majority of community service essays probably begin a lot like it, but it gives the reader little information and does nothing to draw them in. On the other hand, the second sentence begins immediately with action and helps persuade the reader to keep reading so they can learn what happened to the dog.

Step 2: Discuss the Work You Did

Once you've hooked your reader in with your first sentence, tell them about your community service experiences. State where you work, when you began working, how much time you've spent there, and what your main duties include. This will help the reader quickly put the rest of the essay in context and understand the basics of your community service work.

Not including basic details about your community service could leave your reader confused.

Step 3: Include Specific Details

It's the details of your community service that make your experience unique and memorable, so go into the specifics of what you did.

For example, don't just say you volunteered at a nursing home; talk about reading Mrs. Johnson her favorite book, watching Mr. Scott win at bingo, and seeing the residents play games with their grandchildren at the family day you organized. Try to include specific activities, moments, and people in your essay. Having details like these let the readers really understand what work you did and how it differs from other volunteer experiences.

Compare these two passages:

"For my volunteer work, I tutored children at a local elementary school. I helped them improve their math skills and become more confident students."

"As a volunteer at York Elementary School, I worked one-on-one with second and third graders who struggled with their math skills, particularly addition, subtraction, and fractions. As part of my work, I would create practice problems and quizzes and try to connect math to the students' interests. One of my favorite memories was when Sara, a student I had been working with for several weeks, told me that she enjoyed the math problems I had created about a girl buying and selling horses so much that she asked to help me create math problems for other students."

The first passage only gives basic information about the work done by the volunteer; there is very little detail included, and no evidence is given to support her claims. How did she help students improve their math skills? How did she know they were becoming more confident?

The second passage is much more detailed. It recounts a specific story and explains more fully what kind of work the volunteer did, as well as a specific instance of a student becoming more confident with her math skills. Providing more detail in your essay helps support your claims as well as make your essay more memorable and unique.

Step 4: Show Your Personality

It would be very hard to get a scholarship or place at a school if none of your readers felt like they knew much about you after finishing your essay, so make sure that your essay shows your personality. The way to do this is to state your personal strengths, then provide examples to support your claims. Take some time to think about which parts of your personality you would like your essay to highlight, then write about specific examples to show this.

• If you want to show that you're a motivated leader, describe a time when you organized an event or supervised other volunteers.
• If you want to show your teamwork skills, write about a time you helped a group of people work together better.
• If you want to show that you're a compassionate animal lover, write about taking care of neglected shelter animals and helping each of them find homes.

Step 5: State What You Accomplished

After you have described your community service and given specific examples of your work, you want to begin to wrap your essay up by stating your accomplishments. What was the impact of your community service? Did you build a house for a family to move into? Help students improve their reading skills? Clean up a local park? Make sure the impact of your work is clear; don't be worried about bragging here.

If you can include specific numbers, that will also strengthen your essay. Saying "I delivered meals to 24 home-bound senior citizens" is a stronger example than just saying "I delivered meals to lots of senior citizens."

Also be sure to explain why your work matters. Why is what you did important? Did it provide more parks for kids to play in? Help students get better grades? Give people medical care who would otherwise not have gotten it? This is an important part of your essay, so make sure to go into enough detail that your readers will know exactly what you accomplished and how it helped your community.

"My biggest accomplishment during my community service was helping to organize a family event at the retirement home. The children and grandchildren of many residents attended, and they all enjoyed playing games and watching movies together."

"The community service accomplishment that I'm most proud of is the work I did to help organize the First Annual Family Fun Day at the retirement home. My job was to design and organize fun activities that senior citizens and their younger relatives could enjoy. The event lasted eight hours and included ten different games, two performances, and a movie screening with popcorn. Almost 200 residents and family members attended throughout the day. This event was important because it provided an opportunity for senior citizens to connect with their family members in a way they aren't often able to. It also made the retirement home seem more fun and enjoyable to children, and we have seen an increase in the number of kids coming to visit their grandparents since the event."

The second passage is stronger for a variety of reasons. First, it goes into much more detail about the work the volunteer did. The first passage only states that she helped "organize a family event." That really doesn't tell readers much about her work or what her responsibilities were. The second passage is much clearer; her job was to "design and organize fun activities."

The second passage also explains the event in more depth. A family day can be many things; remember that your readers are likely not familiar with what you're talking about, so details help them get a clearer picture.

Lastly, the second passage makes the importance of the event clear: it helped residents connect with younger family members, and it helped retirement homes seem less intimidating to children, so now some residents see their grand kids more often.

Step 6: Discuss What You Learned

One of the final things to include in your essay should be the impact that your community service had on you. You can discuss skills you learned, such as carpentry, public speaking, animal care, or another skill.

You can also talk about how you changed personally. Are you more patient now? More understanding of others? Do you have a better idea of the type of career you want? Go into depth about this, but be honest. Don't say your community service changed your life if it didn't because trite statements won't impress readers.

In order to support your statements, provide more examples. If you say you're more patient now, how do you know this? Do you get less frustrated while playing with your younger siblings? Are you more willing to help group partners who are struggling with their part of the work? You've probably noticed by now that including specific examples and details is one of the best ways to create a strong and believable essay .

"As a result of my community service, I learned a lot about building houses and became a more mature person."

"As a result of my community service, I gained hands-on experience in construction. I learned how to read blueprints, use a hammer and nails, and begin constructing the foundation of a two-bedroom house. Working on the house could be challenging at times, but it taught me to appreciate the value of hard work and be more willing to pitch in when I see someone needs help. My dad has just started building a shed in our backyard, and I offered to help him with it because I know from my community service how much work it is. I also appreciate my own house more, and I know how lucky I am to have a roof over my head."

The second passage is more impressive and memorable because it describes the skills the writer learned in more detail and recounts a specific story that supports her claim that her community service changed her and made her more helpful.

Step 7: Finish Strong

Just as you started your essay in a way that would grab readers' attention, you want to finish your essay on a strong note as well. A good way to end your essay is to state again the impact your work had on you, your community, or both. Reiterate how you changed as a result of your community service, why you found the work important, or how it helped others.

Compare these two concluding statements:

"In conclusion, I learned a lot from my community service at my local museum, and I hope to keep volunteering and learning more about history."

"To conclude, volunteering at my city's American History Museum has been a great experience. By leading tours and participating in special events, I became better at public speaking and am now more comfortable starting conversations with people. In return, I was able to get more community members interested in history and our local museum. My interest in history has deepened, and I look forward to studying the subject in college and hopefully continuing my volunteer work at my university's own museum."

The second passage takes each point made in the first passage and expands upon it. In a few sentences, the second passage is able to clearly convey what work the volunteer did, how she changed, and how her volunteer work benefited her community.

The author of the second passage also ends her essay discussing her future and how she'd like to continue her community service, which is a good way to wrap things up because it shows your readers that you are committed to community service for the long-term.

What's Next?

Are you applying to a community service scholarship or thinking about it? We have a complete list of all the community service scholarships available to help get your search started!

Do you need a community service letter as well? We have a step-by-step guide that will tell you how to get a great reference letter from your community service supervisor.

Thinking about doing community service abroad? Before you sign up, read our guide on some of the hazards of international volunteer trips and how to know if it's the right choice for you.

Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

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Guest Essay

Xi Thinks China Can Slow Climate Change. What if He’s Right?

By Jacob Dreyer

Mr. Dreyer, an editor and writer who focuses on the Chinese political economy and science, wrote from Shanghai.

At first glance, Xi Jinping seems to have lost the plot.

China’s president appears to be smothering the entrepreneurial dynamism that allowed his country to crawl out of poverty and become the factory of the world. He has brushed aside Deng Xiaoping’s maxim “To get rich is glorious” in favor of centralized planning and Communist-sounding slogans like “ ecological civilization ” and “ new, quality productive forces ,” which have prompted predictions of the end of China’s economic miracle.

But Mr. Xi is, in fact, making a decades-long bet that China can dominate the global transition to green energy, with his one-party state acting as the driving force in a way that free markets cannot or will not. His ultimate goal is not just to address one of humanity’s most urgent problems — climate change — but also to position China as the global savior in the process.

It has already begun. In recent years, the transition away from fossil fuels has become Mr. Xi’s mantra and the common thread in China’s industrial policies. It’s yielding results: China is now the world’s leading manufacturer of climate-friendly technologies, such as solar panels , batteries and electric vehicles . Last year the energy transition was China’s single biggest driver of overall investment and economic growth, making it the first large economy to achieve that.

This raises an important question for the United States and all of humanity: Is Mr. Xi right? Is a state-directed system like China’s better positioned to solve a generational crisis like climate change, or is a decentralized market approach — i.e., the American way — the answer?

How this plays out could have serious implications for American power and influence.

Look at what happened in the early 20th century, when fascism posed a global threat. America entered the fight late, but with its industrial power — the arsenal of democracy — it emerged on top. Whoever unlocks the door inherits the kingdom, and the United States set about building a new architecture of trade and international relations. The era of American dominance began.

Climate change is, similarly, a global problem, one that threatens our species and the world’s biodiversity. Where do Brazil , Pakistan , Indonesia and other large developing nations that are already grappling with the effects of climate change find their solutions? It will be in technologies that offer an affordable path to decarbonization, and so far, it’s China that is providing most of the solar panels , electric cars and more. China’s exports, increasingly led by green technology, are booming, and much of the growth involves exports to developing countries .

From the American neoliberal economic viewpoint, a state-led push like this might seem illegitimate or even unfair. The state, with its subsidies and political directives, is making decisions that are better left to the markets, the thinking goes.

But China’s leaders have their own calculations, which prioritize stability decades from now over shareholder returns today. Chinese history is littered with dynasties that fell because of famines, floods or failures to adapt to new realities. The Chinese Communist Party’s centrally planned system values constant struggle for its own sake, and today’s struggle is against climate change. China received a frightening reminder of this in 2022, when vast areas of the country baked for weeks under a record heat wave that dried up rivers , withered crops and was blamed for several heatstroke deaths.

China’s government knows that it must make this green transition out of rational self-interest or risk joining the Soviet Union on history’s scrap heap, and is actively positioning itself to do so. It is increasingly led by people with backgrounds in science, technology and environmental issues. Shanghai, the country’s largest city and its financial and industrial leading edge, is headed by Chen Jining, an environmental systems expert and China’s former minister of environmental protection. Across the country, money is being poured into developing and bringing to market new advances in things like rechargeable batteries and into creating corporate champions in renewable energy .

To be clear, for Mr. Xi, this green agenda is not purely an environmental endeavor. It also helps him tighten his grip on power. In 2015, for instance, the Central Environmental Inspection Team was formed to investigate whether provincial leaders and even agencies of the central government were adhering to his green push, giving him another tool with which to exert his already considerable power and authority.

At the same time, locking in renewable energy sources is a national security issue for Mr. Xi; unlike the United States, China imports almost all of its oil, which could be disrupted by the U.S. Navy in choke points like the Malacca Strait in the event of war.

Mr. Xi’s plan — call it his Green Leap Forward — has serious deficiencies. China continues to build coal-fired power plants , and its annual greenhouse-gas emissions remain far greater than those of the United States, though American emissions are higher on a per-capita basis. China’s electric vehicle industry was built on subsidies , and the country may be using forced labor to produce solar panels. Those are serious concerns, but they fade into the background when Pakistan floods or Brazil wants to build an E.V. factory or South Africa desperately needs solar panels for a faltering energy grid.

American politics may be inadvertently helping China gobble up global market share in renewable energy products. When the United States — whether for national security or protectionist reasons — keeps Chinese companies like Huawei out of the American market or rolls up the welcome mat for electric vehicle makers like BYD or companies involved in artificial intelligence or self-driving cars, those businesses must look elsewhere.

President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act , aimed at tackling climate change, has put the United States on a solid path toward carbon neutrality. But America’s decentralization and focus on private innovation means government policy cannot have quite the same impact that it can in China.

So it is crucial for Americans to recognize that, for most of the world, perhaps for all of us, China’s ability to provide low-cost green technology is, on balance, great news. All of humanity needs to move toward renewables at a huge scale — and fast. America still leads in innovation, while China excels in taking frontier science and making its application in the real world cost-effective. If American politicians, investors and businesses recognize that climate change is humanity’s biggest threat, that could open pathways for diplomacy, collaboration and constructive competition with China that benefit us all.

Together, China and the United States could decarbonize the world. But if Americans don’t get serious about it, the Chinese will do it without them.

And if the United States tries to obstruct China, by way of corporate blacklists, trade or technology bans or diplomatic pressure, it will end up looking like part of the climate problem. That happened earlier this month when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, during a visit to China, urged officials here to rein in green technology exports that the United States says are hurting American companies.

Mr. Xi won’t completely toss out the polluting manufacturing-for-export economic model that has served China so well, nor does he seem ready to halt construction of coal plants. Both are considered necessary for economic and energy security until the green transition is complete. But they are now only a means to an end. The endgame, it seems, is to reach carbon neutrality while dominating the industries making that possible.

Much like how the United States showed up late for World War II, China’s clean-tech companies are latecomers, piggybacking on technology developed elsewhere. But history rewards not necessarily who was there first but who was there last — when a problem was solved. Mr. Xi seems to discern the climate chaos on the horizon. Winning the race for solutions means winning the world that comes next.

Jacob Dreyer is an American editor and writer focused on the intersection of the Chinese political economy and science. He lives in Shanghai.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Topic Question

Striving for more or thriving with less – what pressing scarcity do you see, and how do you suggest to tackle it.

Scarcity generally refers to a situation where human needs exceed available resources . This year’s Global Essay Competition invites young leaders worldwide to focus on a specific contemporary or future challenge related to scarcity and propose an innovative way to address it.

Be creative in thinking about proposed solutions: do we need to strive for more and find ways to boost the availability of the resource in question? Or does it focus on ways to thrive with less and thus rethink our needs and demand?

Be free in choosing which scarce resource you focus on: examples include – but are NOT limited to – human labour, capital, natural resources, or intangibles like time, creativity, or care. Be bold and precise in describing a contemporary or future challenge of scarcity and the specific kind of resources you focus on, and offer a concrete and actionable idea of how we should confront it.

Registration window for the GEC for the 53rd St. Gallen Symposium is closed.

If problems occur during registration, please clear your cached images and files in your browsing history or consider using the browser Google Chrome. If you still cannot apply, use the following  link. For any unanswered questions please contact us via e-mail at  [email protected]

Prerequisites

Qualify with an excellent essay.

We expect a professional, creative and thought-provoking essay. Be bold, unconventional, and distinctive on the competition question.

For your contribution to be valid, the following criteria must be met

Check your eligibility and prepare documents, to be eligible, you must fulfill all of the following criteria:.

• Enrolled in a graduate or postgraduate programme (master level or higher) in any field of study at a regular university
• Born in 1994 or later

Make sure you can provide the following documents:

• Copy of passport or other identification (in English for non-Roman languages)
• Confirmation of matriculation/enrolment from your university which proves your enrollment in a graduate/postgraduate level programme as of 1 February 2024 (download sample document  here )
• Your contribution file with no indication of your name in the file name, the file metadata or the file itself

Meet us and ask your questions!

Meet our student representatives to learn how you can qualify for a participation in the 53 rd St. Gallen Symposium. We will have physical presentations at your university again as well as regular webinars to answer your questions!

Accompanying a Leader of Tomorrow

General questions, who can compete for a participation as a leader of tomorrow at the st. gallen symposium.

Students enrolled at a regular university, who are matriculated in a graduate or postgraduate programme.

What is the St. Gallen Global Essay Competition?

The St. Gallen Global Essay Competition is a global student essay competition, offering students who study at graduate or postgraduate level around the world the opportunity to apply for participation at the St. Gallen Symposium.

What is the Knowledge Pool?

The Knowledge Pool is a group of Leaders of Tomorrow with a strong affiliation to topics of relevance to the St. Gallen Symposium. They show outstanding track records in the particular fields they work or study. They are hand-selected by the International Students’ Committee. It is not possible to apply for membership in the Knowledge Pool.

How much does it cost to participate? 

The participation in the symposium is free for all Leaders of Tomorrow. Moreover, expenses for travel, board and lodging are covered by the ISC. However, we recommend bringing a small amount of pocket money for your convenience.

Essay Competition

Who is eligible for the 54 th  st. gallen symposium.

Students enrolled at a regular university, who are matriculated in a graduate or postgraduate programme as of 1 February 2025, from any field of study, born in 1995 or later.

What is a “regular university”?

In the context of the Global Essay Competition, a regular university is defined as an institution of higher education that also conducts research and offers at least one PhD programme. Exceptions are possible and are granted on a case-by-case basis.

Can Bachelor students participate?

Unfortunately, students on bachelor level do not fulfil the eligibility criteria and therefore cannot enter the competition. There is no other way to apply for participation and we, therefore, encourage all students to join the competition once they pursue with their studies at a graduate level. You may, however, be eligible if the level of study in your current year is equivalent to international graduate level which must be confirmed in writing by your university.

Can teams participate?

Only individual submissions are allowed as we can only grant participation to one contender per contribution.

How long should the contribution be? 

The maximum amount of words is 2,100 (excluding bibliography or graph descriptions and the like). There is no minimum word count. Please make sure to state the exact word count in your document. Also keep in mind that you must not state your name in the contribution.

Do I have to quote my sources?

All sources must be quoted and all essays are scanned for plagiarism. You must refer each source to the respective text passage. Please note that plagiarism is a serious offense and that we reserve the right to take further steps in case of deliberate fraud. Self-plagiarism will also result in disqualification, as the work has to be written exclusively for the Global Essay Competition of the St. Gallen Symposium.

Can I have a look at previous Winner Essays?

Yes, you can find winner essays as well as other publications from the Global Essay Competition here .

What file formats are accepted?

Please make sure to hand in your essay in either a doc, docx or pdf format. The document must allow to copy the text easily (no document protections).

What documents do I need to submit?

In addition to your contribution, make sure to upload

• a copy of your passport (or any other official government ID but no driver’s license) to verify your age
• a confirmation of matriculation from your university confirming your graduate or postgraduate student status as of February 2023
• a short abstract (200–300 words) which can be entered in the registration form directly

in the applicable field of the registration form.

What happens after I submitted my application?

The ISC will verify your eligibility and check all submitted documents for completeness and readability. Due to the large amount of essays we receive, our response may take some time, so thank you for your patience. If the jury selects your essay in the top 100 , you qualify as a Leader of Tomorrow for an expenses-paid participation in the 52 nd St. Gallen Symposium (4-5 May 2023). The results will be announced via e-mail by mid-March 2023. The jury selects the three awardees based on the quality of the idea on paper. The award is endowed with a total prize money of CHF 20,000. In addition, there will be a chance for the very best competitors (including the awardees) to present their ideas on the big stage at the symposium. For this, the students will be asked to pitch their idea on video beforehand.

Who’s in the jury?

The Award Jury consists of leading executives, journalists and professors from all around the world. The Academic Jury is composed of young top academics from the University of St. Gallen and the ETH Zurich.

When will the results be announced?

The jury’s decision will be announced by mid-March at the latest.

Participation

How do the travel arrangements work.

The organizing committee will get in touch with you prior to the symposium to discuss your itinerary and to book your travel.

Can the organising committee help me get a visa?

All Leaders of Tomorrow are self-responsible to get a visa. However, we will inform the applicable Swiss embassy about the invitation and will provide you with the necessary documents. Should a problem arise anyway, we are happy to help. Expenses for visa application are borne by the Leaders of Tomorrow themselves.

Where am I accommodated during the symposium?

All Leaders of Tomorrow are accommodated at private student flats across the city. Please give us an early notice should you have any special requirements (e.g. female flatmates only).

What transport is provided?

We book flights or train tickets and provide shuttle service from and to the airport. Furthermore, all Leaders of Tomorrow receive a free ticket for the public transport in St. Gallen during the week of the symposium.

How much money do I need? 

We recommend bringing some pocket money (CHF 100–200) for your convenience. Please note that depending on your time of arrival and departure, some meals might not be covered.

Can disabled people participate as well? 

Yes, of course. Most of the symposium sites are wheelchair-accessible and we are more than happy to help where we can. Although our ability to provide personal assistance is very limited, we do our best to provide the necessary services.

Is there any touristic programme and do I have time for sightseeing?

During the symposium there will be no time for sightseeing. However, we may offer selected touristic programmes a day before or after the symposium. These days can, of course, also be used for individual sightseeing. Nearby sites include the old town of St. Gallen, the lake Constance and the mountain Säntis.

Can I extend my stay in Switzerland?

Yes, upon request we can move your return flight to a date of your choice. If the new flight is more expensive, we may ask you to cover the price difference. Please note that we are unable to provide any services such as accommodation or transportation after the end of the symposium week.

Can I bring a spouse?

Unfortunately, we cannot provide any services such as travel, room, board or symposium access to any additional person.

Past Winners & Essay Reviews

Out of approx. 1,000 annual contributions submitted by graduate and post-graduate students from all around the globe, the jury selects three winner essays every year. Meet our competition’s past winners and read their contributions.

2023 – A New Generational Contract

Elliot gunn, gaurav kamath, megan murphy, essay question:.

The best or worst legacy from previous generations: How to preserve or replace it?

A great deal of our lives is influenced by when we were born. As those currently alive, we have inherited the world which previous and older generations have built. We owe a great deal to the efforts of our forebears, but we also inherit problematic legacies.

2022 – Collaborative Advantage

Sophie lara neuber, anton meier, bryan kwang shing tan.

Collaborative Advantage: what should be written into a new intergenerational contract?

 The idea of a “generational contract” embodies the principles that younger and older generations rely on each other to provide mutual support across different stages of their lives. Inclusive education systems, sustainable welfare states and meaningful environmental action are some of many challenges requiring a cross-generational collaborative effort. Yet, with the climate crisis, rapid technological change and societal aging in many countries, the generational contract and notions of intergenerational fairness have been challenged. Members of the younger generation are raising their voices as they reflect on how their futures are being compromised by current decision-makers.

 What’s your specific and actionable idea that should be written into a new generational contract? Choose an area where you see evidence that intergenerational fairness is – or, going forward, will be – challenged and where the generational contract needs to be rewritten. Potential areas include, but are not limited to, business strategy and the economy, inclusive governance and education, the welfare state and health care, environmental sustainability, or the world of work. Describe your problem and offer concrete and practical proposals how inter-generational fairness can be restored or reinvented. Explain your idea’s impact for the future.

2021 – Trust Matters

Janz irvin chiang.

1st place – Peking University

Joan  Nyangena

2nd place – York University

Karl Michael Braun

3rd place – Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg

A Matter of Trust: How Can Trust be Repaired When It’s Lost?

In recent years, we have seen many reports about “trust crises” in the realms of politics, health, business, technology, science, and media. Political and corporate scandals, mass protests, and deteriorating trust indicators in global perception surveys support this diagnosis. As a result, senior leaders in many of these sectors publicly aspire to “rebuild trust” in their decisions, products, or institutions. What would be your advice to them?

Choose an area in one of the above-mentioned sectors where you see evidence that citizens’, consumers’, regulators’, employees’ or other stakeholders’ trust has been lost. Describe your example of an apparent loss of trust; offer concrete and practical proposals on repairing damaged trust. Describe your idea’s impact for the future.

2020 – Freedom Revisited

Symposium  postponed.

As a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the final review and communication of the results of the contributions to the Global Essay Competition was stopped prematurely.

Freedom Revisited: Which aspects of freedom need to be defended, or recalibrated, to meet the challenges of our time?

Domestically and on the international stage, values of individual, economic, and political freedom are subject to critical inquiry or outright attack. Diverse phenomena such as populism, global power shifts, climate change, the digital revolution, and global migration call for a reflection on the value of freedom for the way we live, do business, and organize politically in the years ahead. While some call for a defence of established freedoms, others call for recalibration of our concept of freedom, or the balance we strike between freedom and other values, such as equality, sustainability, and security. Where do you stand in this debate? Choose one of the following positions as you develop your essay:

In defence of freedom: Choose an area in the realm of business, economics, politics, or civil society where current concepts of freedom are under pressure and where they need to be defended. Describe the problem and offer a concrete and practical proposition of how established concepts of freedom should – and can be – defended. Describe its impact for the future.

In defence of recalibrating freedom: Choose an area in the realms of business, economics, politics or civil society where current concepts of freedom are unsuitable for the challenges we face and where they need to be recalibrated. Describe the problem and offer a concrete and practical proposition of how established concepts of freedom should and can be recalibrated. Describe its impact for the future.

2019 – Capital for Purpose

Reuben muhindi wambui (ke).

1st place – The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies

Natalie Hei Tung Lau (HK)

2nd place – University of Pennsylvania

Toan Do (VN)

3rd place – Yale University

Is it as good as it gets? – What approach would you suggest to change the current purpose of capital?

Political volatility, environmental issues, precarious labour markets, technological monopolies, managerial and investment short-termism are only a few challenges we face. The time has come to counter excessive short-termism and start doing business as unusual. Think about the status quo and its implications. What would be an idea to change it? Develop projects or actions you would trust in to bring new and expanded purposes to capital and aim for a long-term positive impact. In your essay you should consider how the use of capital (financial, human, social,…) can solve complex challenges and address substantial changes, be it by individuals, civil society, businesses or governments. Your idea must inspire leaders worldwide to take on responsibility and put it into practice. Be bold and develop a truly impactful concept to win our prestigious award.

2009 – 2018

2018  – beyond the end of work, nat ware (au).

1st place – University of Oxford

Janis Goldschmidt (DE)

João abreu (br).

3rd place – Harvard University

Robots are coming for your job. How do you augment yourself to stay economically relevant?

Author Yuval Noah Harari claims that the rapid progress of artificial intelligence technology will render the human species economically useless within decades. Imagine a world in which humans fight back, harnessing AI and other technologies to stay economically indispensable – and, ultimately, competitive against the computers. Describe the job you aspire to in the future, how it will potentially be influenced by AI, and how you would augment yourself technologically if necessary to prevail in your chosen career.

2017  – The dilemma of disruption

1st Place – University of Oxford

Benjamin Hofmann (DE)

2nd Place – University of St. Gallen

Sigin Ojulu (SS)

3rd Place – University of Southern California

Breaking the status quo – What’s YOUR disruptive idea?

The notion of disruption captures today’s innovation zeitgeist. Nowadays, it seems everyone claims to be a disruptor – particularly young people with an entrepreneurial mindset. Let’s think beyond disruptive innovation in management and look at disruption more generally as something that breaks the status quo – be it in business, politics, science, or society. Pick the one of these four fields you are most passionate about, identify a problem of greater magnitude and come up with a disruptive idea to solve it. Your idea must aspire to inspire top-notch leaders worldwide. Do not free ride on the buzzword “disruption” but rather be bold and develop a truly novel and radical concept to win our prestigious award.

2016  – Growth – the good, the bad, and the ugly

Schima labitsch (at).

1st place – Fordham University

Alexandra Ettlin (CH)

2nd place – University of St.Gallen

Colin Miller (US)

3rd place – New York University

What are alternatives to economic growth?

2015  – Proudly Small

Laya maheshwari (in).

1st place – London School of Economic

Leon Schreiber (ZA)

2nd place – Freie Universität Berlin

Katharina Schramm (DE)

3rd place – University of St.Gallen

Essay Questions:

• What is the next small BIG thing?

Think about unconventional ideas, undiscovered trends or peripheral signals that may turn into ground-breaking changes for societies. Present one idea which is not on the radar of current leaders yet but will change the game in business, politics or civil society – the best ones will be put to the test by the global audience of the St. Gallen Symposium.

• Collaborative Small State Initiative

Although small states lead the global rankings in international benchmark studies on competitiveness, innovation and wealth, they are often politically marginalised. Explore a common agenda for small and prosperous countries and identify one joint project that would increase the relevance of small states on the global stage. Go beyond politics and diplomacy by also including economic and civil players.

• Elites: small but superior groups rule the world – at what price?

Human history shows that the world has been ruled by tiny but superior groups of people. It is the elites who have been controlling societies and the allocation of resources. Given the rise of inequality, a devastating level of famine that still exists, ubiquitous corrupt systems of government, limited access to education for the underprivileged, to name just a few of the world’s greatest problems, elites are challenged to redefine their roles and agenda settings. Share your thoughts on how elites are supposed to emerge and transform in the 21st century.

2014  – The Clash of Generations

Ashwinikumar singh (in).

1st place – University of Mumbai

Martin Seneviratne (AU)

2nd place – University of Sydney

Set Ying Ting (MY)

3rd place – National University of Singapore

• Balancing Generational Claims

The presumption of an altruistic relation between generations and its positive effect on the economic well-being of societies is illusionary. Welfare states have widened fiscal gaps to an irreparable extent for the next generations. When aspiring to a sustainable welfare system, how should intergenerational claims balance without having to rely on selflessness?

• A Double-Edged Legacy

Let’s be frank: The generational contract has failed everywhere – but for different reasons. Exuberant public debts, zooming healthcare costs, unequal distribution of wealth, loss of ethical and moral anchors, loss of trust in existing institutions: each state is facing a unique set of problems. Briefly describe the situation in your country and propose a generational contract defining mutual responsibilities on an economic and social level.

• A Prospect for the Young

Highly educated and ambitious, yet unemployed. A whole generation of young is entering the labour market with little prospect of success. The implications go way beyond individual tragedies as economies with lasting high levels of youth unemployment risk social instability. Present new solutions on how we can overcome this crisis.

• Business between Generations

Slogans like “rent is the new own” or Botsmann and Rogers’s “what’s mine is yours” (HarperBusiness, 2010) mark the trend of shared economy. Although not a new economic phenomenon per se, particularly the Millennials are embracing this attitude towards doing business where they value access over ownership. The trend is gaining global mainstream acceptance which is resulting in a lasting impact on economic performance. Discuss the future of shared economy, its overall implications and the dynamics between supply and demand.

2013 – Rewarding Courage

Kilian semmelmann (de).

1st place – Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Dragov Radoslav (BG)

2nd place – Rotterdam School of Management

Bree Romuld (AU)

3rd place – University of St.Gallen (HSG)

The competitors must choose from one of four competition questions, which refer to the four topic clusters “Putting incentives right”, “Coping with institutions”, “Against the current – courageous people” and “Management of excellence”

• Putting incentives right

How come that both in the corporate world and in politics, responsible courage (e.g. whistleblowing, courage to disagree with current paradigms, etc.) is hardly ever rewarded? Where the big decisions for the future are taken, anxiety, conformity and despondence prevail. How can this be changed?

• Coping with institutions

Institutions of all kinds shape our behaviour – be it economic, political or social behaviour. How should institutions be designed in order to foster a sustainable economic and social development?

• Against the current – courageous people

Observers lament that younger generations, as individualistic as they are, tend to settle for a highly streamlined social and economic world that does not ask for big decisions or unconventional thinking. Please share your opinion on this observation and explain why you agree or disagree. Please use examples that support your arguments.

• Management of excellence

New insights can only flourish within a culture of dialogue in different opinions. No assumptions should be taken for granted nor should there be any unquestioned truth. However, most people (decision makers, managers, students, etc.) often fail to deal constructively with conflicting opinions. How can companies encourage their employees to build a healthy attitude towards unconventional thinking and acting?

2012 – Facing Risk

Rodrigues caren (in).

1st place – St. Joseph’s Institute of Management

Jennifer Miksch (DE)

2nd place – Geneva Graduate Institute

Jelena Petrovic (SR)

3rd place – King’s College London

Detecting Risks

• The methodological tools that allow early detection of what will shape future trends are pivotal. While risks are emerging faster, these tools still need fostered advancement. What is the role of scenario planning and forecasting methods and who is or should be responsible for these aspects in the organisation? How should the detection of risks be addressed in an increasingly complex and interconnected global landscape?

Risk Aversion

• In wealthy societies, most people tend to suppress risk taking. Given this increasing trend of risk aversion in saturated societies, what are the long term consequences for economy and society? What are the long term consequences of a high level of risk aversion?

Emerging Risks

• There are tremendous risks facing the global community and many people have not yet become aware of their potential consequences (e.g. public debt burden). What are the societal, economic and/or political risks your generation of decision makers will be facing in the future? How could you convert these risks into opportunities?

Managing Risk

• There is often a disconnect between taking risks and bearing the burden of the consequences of doing so (e.g. risk taking in investment banking). Who should bear the consequences of negligent risk taking and why? How can healthy risk taking be fostered in wealthy societies?

2011 – Just Power

Marcelo ber (ar).

1st place – New York University

Dhru Kanan Amal (IN)

2nd place – London School of Economics

Maria de los Angeles Lasa (AR)

3rd place – Università di Camerino

• Justice and Power
• Rethinking Leadership
• Public Goods and Values

We asked you to contribute visions and ideas to the theme “Just Power” – Power in the sense of its use in various areas of politics and economics. We expected a professional work which could be an essay, a scenario, a project report or proposal, a multi- media presentation or an entrepreneurial concept. It should be constructive, provocative or instructive, inspiring thoughts and actions as well as introucing new approaches and unconventional ideas. Within the framework of the theme you may choose between three subtopics for your contribution.

2010 – Entrepreneurs – Agents of Change

Ainur begim (kz).

1st place – University of Oslo

James Clear (USA)

Christoph birkholz (de).

• What makes an entrepreneur an “agent of change”?
• Changing of the guard: Who are the new entrepreneurs?
• Corporate entrepreneurship within large companies: a concept for the future or a mere pie in the sky?
• Entrepreneurship between environmental risks and opportunities: What does it take to succeed?

2009 – Revival of Political and Economic Boundaries

Shofwan al-banna choiruzzad (id), jason george (us), aris trantidis (gr), 1999 – 2008, 2008  – global capitalism – local values, guillaume darier (ch), jacobus cilliers (za), feerasta aniqa (nz), christoph matthias paret (de), 2007  – the power of natural resources, benjamin block (us), gustav borgefalk (se), kevin chua (ph), 2006  – inspiring europe, maximilian freier (de), chen yesh (sg), elidor mëhilli (al), william english (us), 2005  – liberty, trust and responsibility, christian h. harding (de), luana badiu (ro), norbert jungmichel (de), fabien curto millet (es /fr), 2004  – the challenges to growth and prosperity, ravi rauniyar (np), peter g. kirchschläger (at / ch), xin dong (cn), 2003 – seeking responses in times of uncertainty, stefanie klein (de), rosita shivacheva (bg), 2002 – pushing limits – questioning goals, constantine (dino) asproloupos (ca / gr), manita jitngarmkusol (th), 2001 – new balance of power, marion mühlberger (at), uwe seibel (de), moses ekra (ci / ca), gerald tan (my), 2000 – time, martin von brocke (de), pei-fu hsieh (tw), tzvetelina tzvetkova (bg), 1999 – new markets, new technologies, new skills, peter doralt (fr), valérie feldmann (de), rajen makhijani (in).

“Partaking in the competition was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Not only was I able to come to St. Gallen and meet incredible young entrepreneurs and leaders who I’m still in contact with, but it provided me the opportunity to develop and share ideas with key decision-makers. The main idea I submitted was for a new way to finance retraining and healthcare at no cost to individuals or governments. Given the COVID- 19 pandemic, this idea is needed now more than ever, so I’m currently implementing the idea through a new organization I’ve established called FORTE ( Financing Of Return To Employment ).” NAT WARE , Founder & CEO of FORTE, Leader of Tomorrow at the 47th and 48th St. Gallen Symposium