Looking back

  In 1994 I was on an International development education program with Canada World Youth in Flores, Indonesia.  I lived with a great family whose daughter was getting ready to depart for school in Java.  We all drove her to the pier in Larantuka, stopping at relatives’ homes to eat, dance and send her off.  It was dark when she boarded the ship.  When I looked over at her father, he had tears running down his face.  Fourteen years later, I still remember that moment.  The moment he reminded me of my own parents, seeing their daughters off on their many journeys.  We are so much the same.

Yasmeen, Vancouver, Canada

A famous global citizen

I think a global citizen is a person who is a member of the world and famous, like God.  He is really famous because he takes care of the world.

K.B.

A global citizen

A global citizen is someone who cares about the earth and protects it. There are lots of things to do to be one!  You could clean up garbage and recycle. You could help people by raising money, like for Jump Rope for Heart.

J.M.

Helping

I am part of the world and part of the city.  I can help the earth by being kind to the environment.

I.C.

Canada

I think a global citizen is someone who can come from another country to Canada.

H.V.

Garbage

I think a global citizen is someone who takes care of the earth by picking up garbage .  A global citizen keeps the earth clean.  A global citizen likes meeting people. When you’re walking and you see another person walking, you can say hi. 

K.G.

Global citizens

I think a global citizen is someone who helps the environment and is born on the Earth in Canada.

J.C.

Global citizenship is important.

The world is for us.  We were born here.  It’s for us.  Also, my mission is to say something good to everyone.

R.V.

Helping the world

I think a global citizen is someone who owns the world.  I think a global citizen is a person who travels around the whole world.  I think a global citizen is someone who makes the world so happy by cleaning up everything, buying toys for new babies or being nice to babies because they’re just born and they don’t know anything yet.

T.J.

Protect the Earth

I think a global citizen is someone who is an astronaut and goes up to protect the world.  I think a global citizen is someone who protects the environment by helping it.

R.M.

Health and safety and recycling

 

I think a global citizen is someone who is a healthy and safe guy and protects the earth.  A global citizen always recycles and when he sees trash on the ground he always puts in the can where it’s supposed to go.

C.R.

Everybody’s part of the world

I think a global citizen is someone who is born and starting to be part of the world.   Being part of the world is trying to help the community with different parts of it, like picking up garbage, helping people and helping kids learn as well.

A.M.

Global citizens

A global citizen is a person who comes from a different country.  We are all global citizens because we come from different places.

J.H.

Global citizens by traveling

I think a global citizen is someone who travels places.  I have traveled to China, Wonderland and my friend’s house so I’m a global citizen.

 

 

A.M.

Global communications!

My global citizenship starts with communication!

As a fairly experienced traveller, I have learned a few un-written rules when being ouside of my home country.

#1.  Manners. Be polite, you can get very, very lost if you do not communicate well.

#2. Carry a map / guidebook. This can be quite helpful in situations when, the last directions you recieved sent you on a wild goose chase because you may not have used rule #1…… and my favourite…

#3.Use a language dictionary. Please, Thank-you, Good -day and Toilet, are mandatory in every language.

 

One of my first international travelling experiences started in Prague Cz.

The Czech language is very difficult to comprehend for someone with grade 10 English and absolutely no other language skills, I was managing a bar/restaurant with over 25 staff members, half of which spoke zero English and the other half … you guessed it….. no Czech! I was forced to learn the language.

As the time went by, I found that the people were excited to help me, and not just the employees, but anyone I may have come across. They would give me the proper pronunciations, context, even tenses.

 

One day I was shopping for something that I couldn’t pronounce.  I walked up to the woman at the counter and very politely, I asked in my best Czech, ” Please excuse me Ms, do you happen to speak English?”

She looked at me in confusion and replied, ” Why would I speak English to you when you are speaking Czech to me?”

 

At that point, I became a global citizen.

 

Terry,  Mississauga, Ontario, Canada

homing desire

it’s been 7 years since i left my “home”–home being where i stay when i visit my parents.
i did not grow up in the house and the city where they live. it still feels foreign to me.
the room they call “your room” i do not have any memories of.
it’s the way it looks in the morning light, the smell of fresh linen on my pillow…i wake up in the middle of night and i don’t recognize where i am. my mother gets very upset when she hears me say that i feel like a guest and should make my bed–dai, this IS your home. don’t be a stranger.

home to me, is a particular thing. the word reminds me of the feelings to closeness and estrangement.
i am here, but not for long. or i am here but i can not be here. we moved many times when my sister and i were kids. a new city, a new school, new classmates. different places, different people, and the same strangeness. in some places i was a popular kid. in some, i was not. i have not revisited those places and friends after we moved.

i left japan right after college. moved to New York City to study in a graduate school. it was an excuse (an expensive one for my parents, i must say). i needed to figure out how to live with my sexuality–this thing that i had been struggling with, but could not really understand. a new city, a new school, the familiar estrangement. it was quite education, alright. endless night-outs, countless dating (online and offline), friendships and heart-breaks. i felt close to myself. i made myself at home.

now i’m here. vancouver, british columbia, canada. with a partner of 3.5 years. we are becoming permanent residents. again, a new city,  a new school (this time for phd), the same old feeling of being out of place/at home. when i ride my scooter to go to school, there is a point where i can see the north shore mountains and the ocean beyond the houses and trees. what a beautiful,beautiful sight. but very strange indeed.

(dai/vancouver)

The Long Road Ahead

Having worked with young adult international students in a private ESL school for the last 10 years, I am curious to better understand how students experience cultural difference while they are studying overseas, how it becomes internalized, what transformations occur and whether it creates notions of global citizenship. While for some the cross cultural learning is huge, it can be almost completely absent in others. ESL schools are wonderful opportunities for exchange in this area, but the neutral, surface way it is taken up in many classrooms is concerning. While the notion of the ‘global village’ is used as a marketing tool, explicit learning about cross cultural communication or discussion about how one perceives, understands and co-creates their own cultural identity is conspicuously missing in language learning. In short it is risky business, and risky for business. My personal concern is that when I ask myself whether students’ perspectives have broadened, stayed the same or narrowed, I fear not nearly enough broadening has occurred, and that rather than increasing understanding, further reinforcement of perceptions found in the media is taking place. When I consider what it means to truly examine and deconstruct cultural understanding and biases, we are only moving forward marginally and that as educators, and citizens, we could and should do much more in debunking and challenging media created and reinforced notions of culture. A commitment to this goal is, in part, how I define global citizenship. 

Sister B, Vancouver, Canada 

Looking in and looking out

To me, being a global citizen means engaging with the world around you, wanting to learn about other people, other places and other ways of life.  It’s about expanding your own worldview.  And connecting with people.  Looking in and looking out from wherever you are.  Living in Toronto, in the midst of so much diversity, it’s hard not to feel part of a global community. 

 

Maya, Toronto, Canada

Global citizenship

I am a teacher.  I believe it is my job and my obligation to broaden my students’ scope of the world.
It is also equally important that I broaden my understandings and knowledge.

Over the past fourteen years, I have taught children from many parts of the world. They all want the same thing. They want to be valued and recognized. Valued as a culture, nationality or religion and as individuals.  My bangles remind of global citizenship.

 

I took the picture of my hand wearing copper and teal stoned bangles.  Every
time I wear them I get complimented on how beautiful they are.  Sometimes
from friends but mostly from my ELL students.  I get asked if I bought them
in India or Pakistan. I say they were made in India but I didn’t buy them in
India. My students then take the opportunity to tell me how their mothers,
grandmothers or aunties wear them.  They love to see me wear and appreciate
something beautiful from their country. Often this leads into a discussion
about their countries and how people dress. I tell them that one day I hope
to travel through East Asia.  I then, tell my students I bought the bangles,
in a boutique in the Domincan Republic when I was on a family holiday. They
are surprised but happy that so many other cultures, even a small country in
the Caribbean appreciate designs from East Asia.

My students love to hear that I value and have a desire to learn about
where they come from.  Global citizenship is seeing and recognizing the
value all people bring to the world.

Raya, Toronto, Ontario

Same same

Global citizenship…hmm.  Running into friends, or friends of friends in the most random places – Christchurch, Barcelona, Goa, or Suva.  Relatives across the continent, and around the world.  Old friends who have moved far and wide.  New friends from far and wide.  A glorious city, Toronto, full of richnesses from the whole world.

To me, global citizenship is the unbelievable convergence of lives across the globe, a connectivity new to human history, and thus a redefinition of the human experience.   

We are at a unique moment in time when long distance transportation is relatively cheap and accessible, and when urbanization has drawn hundreds of millions of people into cultures of speed and travel.

For the first time in 20,000 years of human history, now family and friends, work and study can draw us countries or continents away.  And we are not forever flung from each other, instead we can easily visit the people we know who are far away or vice versa, and travel far and wide for leisure.  (I am speaking of course from a Canadian middle class perspective).

The result of this easy access has been both catastrophic and wondrous, both devastatingly impactful on the environment and ‘labour markets’ and ‘natural resources’, and beauteously expanding cultural understanding and religious interconnections  and the human experience.   We can see how different we are, but more importantly we can see how similar we are. 

I’m reminded of when I was travelling in India, and an older man asked me where I was from (being of Indian descent but looking obviously out of place and missing the language, people were very often curious to know).  I answered that I was from Canada.  The man looked at me, smiled, bobbled his head of course, and responded ‘Same same, but slightly different’.  

Same same, but slightly different.  Indeed.

Leah, Toronto, Canada

 

Global citizenship

I think that global citizenship means contributing to the world in a way that will lead to a better global society for everyone. I feel that people do that in many different ways. The careers that they choose, the food that they eat, the way they consume or don’t consume, what they spend their money on, how they choose to educate themselves, the way that they communicate with others, what they teach their children….
 
Global citizenship to me, also means being aware of how your actions impact others, from those who have direct contact with you, to people living on the other side of the world. Global citizens do not have to be perfect people, but they are people that are conscious of their impact.
 
Lisa, Toronto, Canada