So, you’ve decided to come to GES 2012. Great! Now, you’ve got some questions about what to expect. Here’s a quick guide to everything you need to know before the summit. Who will be there? We have around 70 delegates in total, from schools around the U.S. and 15 other countries, attending the summit this year. Each GES delegate comes with a project for sustainable social change. Some of them are already being implemented in places like Haiti, Guatemala, and India. Others ...

Pro-noia: the belief that the world is conspiring towards your success - As defined by Jeff Pinzino, Closing Keynote speaker On February 25th, Northwestern students, GES staff and alumni, and community members gathered for GES Day 2012, a miniature version of the April summit. This all-day event incorporated four hands-on workshops on different aspect of social change, a lunchtime photo exhibit from Open Shutter, and a closing keynote address on “"Integrating Social Change Into Your Life" with Brooke Estin of InSTEDD and Jeff ...

Although I am sure most everybody has experienced career phobia to some extent in their lives, I have literally never been certain about what I want to be when I grow up. It has always made me feel a little unfocused and scared, but the whole concept of social entrepreneurship has changed that for me. I realized that whatever I do, in the grand scheme of things, I want to make an impact that transcends money and glory. ...

This last week, on Tuesday January 17, 2012, the GES staff had an ardent discussion about the role of politics in GES. Should we be spending time discussing and interpreting politics with the GES delegates, or should we be focusing on service-project development? This is an issue I had never before considered, and I listened to the opinions of my fellow staffers as I attempted to create my own stance. After hearing many arguments supporting several different ...

At the MLK Day vigil on Monday, Tim King, a pioneer of education reform and the founder of Urban Prep Academies, spoke about his organization’s commitment to develop its students’ intellect and character. Urban Prep runs a network of public charter schools in Chicago for young, underserved, black men to counter the huge disparities they face in academic success and job opportunity. Tim King drew on this principle of balance, of providing knowledge and building the ethic to use it, ...

GES. Global Engagement Summit. It’s a term that I had often heard thrown around campus but not something that I had ever really understood. I knew that a bunch of my friends were always busy for a week during spring quarter when students from all over the world came to Northwestern for some sort of conference. I knew that it had something to do with discussing projects. And I knew that the people in it worked really hard and seemed ...

http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/how-charities-used-donations-for-haiti/?scp=1&sq=donations&st=cse If you're reading this, you're probably among the estimated two-thirds of Americans who donated to help Haiti through the catastrophic earthquake of 2010. And whether you gave $10 through text messaging or $1,000 through the Red Cross, you've probably wondered where exactly your dollars went. The New York Times published a short article a few days ago describing the efforts of Charity Navigator (charitynavigator.org), which, according to it's website, "works to advance a more efficient and responsive philanthropic ...

This week we are featuring a guest blog post from Nathaniel Whittemore - one of the original founders of the Global Engagement Summit. To read the original blog post visit http://nlw.posterous.com/ Unbelievable. 30 years after coming into power at the hest of the bullet cut down Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, Hosni Mubarak has been removed from power not with violence but on the backs of the united voices of millions of Egyptians who have spent the last three weeks demonstrating for a ...

So I’m in this class at Northwestern called “Creative Nonfiction: The Art of Writing for Social Change” along with half the staff in GES. We were recently assigned homework to write about what writing for social change is and what it can be. Besides the traditional reactions and answers, the crux of the discussion in class revolved around what the end product of such writing should be. I obviously don’t know the final answer but, more truthfully, I’m probably disappointed with the common response. Writing, I guess, is ...

I traveled to Namibia to report on refugee issues with fellow students and my journalism professor for a week this past December. Once there, we spent our time talking to refugees at the settlement and neighboring town, Otjiwarongo, and then compiling the information onto our website, www.refugeelives.org. In almost every sense, the sweltering heat of the Namibian desert is a world away from the snowy sidewalks of Northwestern.  Besides the family and friends I spammed with the link to the site, ...