It’s the first full day of GES, and after the first panels and first of the Short Talks, it was time for the first of block of the summit’s workshops. I attended “Utilizing Resources for Effective Community Outreach”, led by GES alums and Triple Thread Apparel founders Kyle McCollom and Chris Cole. As this dapper duo—Kyle was sporting a sharp blue bow-tie—led the group with their framework of creating and taking value at six different levels of shareholders, I could not get past that fact that not only are they former delegates, they were delegates just last year. Flipping through the Summit’s program and reading the biographies of all our facilitators, it’s striking how many the these long paragraphs of inspiring accomplishments are paired with pictures of young, twenty- to thirty-year-olds. Kyle and Chris—who, in addition to launching a screen-printing social enterprise that employs reconciling former offenders, have also founded innovideo.tv—are currently seniors at Vanderbilt!

Even as a GES staff member who does not have a specific project in mind, the workshop was great. With catchy concepts such as “pyro-marketing” and the ability to recognize the “is-ness” and “ought-ness” in developing a vision, the workshop was rich in content. But equally memorable for me was the idea that GES is as much about the supportive and inspirational community as it is about the notes you took during Workshop Block A. We are not just here to learn with each other, but to also to learn from each other, and it’s exciting to see what delegates such as the Triple Thread guys have done and learned in just the past year. I wonder which delegates will be returning as facilitators next year…