By David Chase

Background History

When I was in Cairo studying abroad during my junior year, I ended up spending most of my time tutoring Sudanese refugees in English. The experience was on the one hand more captivating than any other sort of volunteer work I’d ever done — these people would literally line up for hours for 15 minutes that might help them improve their lives and the lives of their families — yet on the other, demonstrated what little capacity I had to actually make a structural difference in the world.

Wondering how many other young people were feeling like that, I got together about a dozen friends, and we traveled to 40 countries the next summer, staying with local and international young changemakers and blogging about the experience at a website we built called JustNaiveEnough.org. The story we heard was the same for everyone: tons of passion and energy, but a real frustration in both structural barriers and personal lack of capacity. The insane thing was that these were not naive, pat-yourself-on-the-back types. They knew they weren’t having the impact they wanted, they just didn’t know how to make it better.

When I came back, GES (then called the International Youth Volunteerism Summit – IYVS) was the way we decided to try to better serve that community of people.

How did it come to fruition?

There were a few key things.

First was finding the right partner in Jon Marino to help me make it a reality. His perspective and relationships were totally vital.

Second was recruiting a team of passionate people to help build it. We had around 40 or 50 people that first year.

Third was getting the administration sold. We went big, pitched the whole vision in extremely concrete terms, and positioned it as meeting strategic objectives they had already laid out. We put together a syndicate of funders from various discretionary pots.

Fourth was designing the content as something truly unique – ridiculously workshop centric, low on panels and keynotes.

Fifth was getting students to apply to come. I think we had something like 600 applicants that first year. There were two main strategies. First was pitch the outcomes (which included financial opportunities) as much as the experience. Second was just hustle, hustle, hustle. We probably spent 400 man hours finding email addresses for campus departments at other schools to send it to.

How did GES influence career

First, GES was the first complete expression of my focus on enabling the Millennial generation to kick as much ass as it has the potential to. That continues to be my driving goal.

Second, it taught me how to build something, distribute power, install a vision, and then eventually give up power entirely, which is vital for entrepreneurship – which is what I do now.

Third, the core philosophy of asset-based thinking is the anchor for a lot of the startup projects I’m working on now.

Gain from founding

Easily the most important pieces were a network and a personal brand. The network was knowledge of literally the best and brightest movers and shakers of our cohort, and the brand was as someone who gets big shit done. Those two things are the anchors of how I continue to operate today.

Most proud of

I’ve always been most proud of the students’ teams that pull it off. In its vision and scope and intellectual passion it is just absolutely best in class for student run anything, and better than the vast majority of professional events. It’s so fuckin’ awesome that 6 years later, the number of people want to be involved goes up every year. That’s amazing, and what I’m most proud of.

Prepare you for trips abroad

It was sort of the other direction. The design of GES was a reaction to what hadn’t been available for world-changing minded students going abroad: real serious skepticism and critique of the aid enterprise, real concrete strategies for partnering with local communities, real topography and understanding of the landscape of options for making the world a better place.

Issues

There are tons of issues. This is the first real management experience for a lot of the staff, meaning a lot of time has to be spent on interpersonal things – but that’s good learning. Always issues with funding and administration expectations. Articulating results is always a challenge.

Advice to staff

First is stay true to the guts of this thing: this is a passionate event built by students for students. It believes in their power to change the world, but that being smart and challenging yourself is the way to do it. It’s always tempting to go flashy, sexy, dumb when it comes to social change, but that’s just not in GES guts. It’s good to be smart and skeptical.

Second, level up. GES has tons of space for innovation, and it’s on the staff to constantly be thinking about the best ways to do that. That doesn’t mean, necessarily try a bunch of new shit just because. It means think about what is something that the event, or the community, or the space, or the outcomes really don’t do that they need to? What is the thing about this that nags the staff? Building innovation into this is essential, and it’s yours to create!