The Story of GSE (Fall 2008-Spring 2010)

Fall 2008: Lucas and Jasper Oshun developed a mission to stimulate cultural tolerance and collaborative community service amongst the world's youth. Global Student Embassy (GSE) is the organization that arose from our mission. Through service learning exchanges groups of youth participants from diverse racial, socioeconomic, cultural, linguistic and geographic backgrounds visit each other’s communities twice a year. GSE practices grassroots international relations by directly linking these young leaders from GSE’s participating communities. In Morogoro, Tanzania; Santa Fe, Argentina; Cusco, Peru; and Sonoma County, United States; GSE Program Directors facilitate workshops focusing on globalization, grassroots organizing, youth leadership, and community development projects. Young ambassadors are selected to serve as representatives of their community and participate in a leadership training/development project in a foreign community. GSE is committed to connecting exceptional students from less developed countries to the globalized world through firsthand travel experience. GSE supports the costs of international student participants and Program Directors to travel to Sonoma County in January, while American students travel to international destinations in June.

January-August 2009: For the first exchange, Lucas and Jasper selected two partner locations, Zurite, Peru (1.5 hours west of Cusco), and Santa Fe, Argentina, based on personal relationships with dedicated teachers in each location. Edit Chalita and Virginia Querini of Santa Fe, Argentina, and Tomás Ruiz López and Uriel Ccopa Villena of Cusco, Peru shared our dream of grassroots international relations: empowering students to put their ideas into practice through cross cultural learning and collaborative development projects. In January of 2009, families in GSE’s Sonoma County community hosted 5 students and 1 teacher from Santa Fe and Zurite in their homes. Local and international students collaborated to build a half-acre organic garden. To date, the garden has produced over 350 pounds of organic produce, with donations made to Food For Thought HIV/AIDS food bank, and the Graton Day Labor Center. In the summer of 2009, one GSE student delegation traveled to Santa Fe and another to Zurite. In Santa Fe, the local and international students painted a dilapidated school and planted trees in an adjoining plaza, while students traveling to Zurite worked alongside 100 Zuriteños to build a 1.5 km irrigation canal. The canal was completed in October, and now provides year-round irrigation to 150 families.

Due to the great success of the first exchange in January 2009, Lucas, Jasper, and current director, Yasha Mokaram, traveled to Morogoro, Tanzania in February to found a new branch of GSE. We forged connections to build a network establishing a GSE partnership between two rural development Masters students at Sokoine University of Agriculture, local professors, teachers and students from four high schools, and the Ministry of Education. GSE is proud to support the Masters studies of Rogers Sabugo and Godfrey Deogratius, our local Program Directors, who run weekly workshops with over 70 high school students. GSE plans to use the youth-to-youth link between university and high school students established in Morogoro as a model for future expansion.

Fall 2009-Winter 2010: GSE continued to build on its theory of cross-cultural collaboration by hosting 5 students and 2 directors from Morogoro and Santa Fe. These students stayed with host families, worked alongside Sonoma County students to build a garden at El Molino High School, and participated in workshops in local organic gardens, and local high schools.

Summer 2010: This summer, Yasha will lead a group of 5 students to Santa Fe, where they will create an organic garden at an underfunded local high school for students with learning disabilities. There is an existing emphasis on farming at the school, and by funding and helping to build greenhouses, an orchard, garden beds, and a children’s garden, GSE can help them further their goals, while explaining organic gardening techniques, and promoting education about local and organic food production.

In Morogoro, Tanzania, GSE will implement its most ambitious project to date: the creation of the Morogoro Youth Training Center (MYTC). The MYTC will operate as the central office and classroom of GSE Morogoro, as well as an Internet café. Workshops focusing on GSE’s 5 pillars of development will be taught every day to local high school, university, and out of school youth. The 5 pillars are: 1) rural/agricultural development; 2) ICT/ business entrepreneurship; 3) globalization and international relations; 4) health education; and 5) youth leadership and development. Funds generated from the Internet café will cover operating costs and will also support microlending to student groups at the four participating high schools. The first microlending project will be a poultry project directed by GSE leader Paul Israel:

This is an example of a leadership initiative by local students and it is one of the first two projects to be implemented through the MYTC. The proposal and plan for this project was designed by Mzumbe Secondary GSE Club members. Tanzanian and Californian participants worked together to help deconstruct an old building in order to extract and recycle the supplies that we would use to build large chicken coops. Mzumbe Secondary students and builders used a GSE loan and a grant from the school administration to construct a home for 250 chickens. The profits generated through the sale of eggs at the school and surrounding community will support the MYTC, provide a source of protein to students, help with school fees and supplies, and provide transport money for GSE members to travel to the MYTC for computer trainings and meetings with other GSE students. (*For anyone interested, please ask for a copy of the detailed profit distribution the students have made and included in the loan agreement signed by Tanzanian director, California director, Mzumbe Secondary head master, and the head student in charge at Mzumbe.)

. Along side his fellow GSE club members, he aims to produce 350 eggs/day at Mzumbe Secondary School. The profits from the project will benefit the school and cover transportation costs of GSE members.

The MYTC will has 24 computers, and provides a central location for community youth in a country where 45% of the population is under the age of 18. GSE runs ICT training workshops to connect young people to the globalized world.

Thank you to all of our supporters. We raised $32,000 to complete in a new office building in downtown Morogoro. Tanzanian and Californian students collaborated on this project that will transform student access to technology, and Morogoro's students position in the globalized network.