Global PACT: Partnerships for Activism & Cross-Cultural Training

Global PACT starts with a simple premise: the world is not perfect, and you can do something to change it. To find out more information about trainings, parternships, and other opportunities visit us at : http://www.globalpact.info

Overview

Global PACT is building an international network of individuals who are able to engage self-identified problems in their communities. We do this by facilitating practical trainings that use real-life challenges to teach personal, project, and organizational development skills. Recognizing that people are the experts in and stakeholders of their own local community problems, Global PACT is non-ideological, non-partisan, and respectful of different cultures and values.

The Story of Global PACT

Global PACT began in the summer of 2002 as a project involving the Rutgers University Citizenship and Service Education (CASE) program; Women for Social Progress (WSP), a Mongolian NGO; and the Institute for Domestic and International Affairs (IDIA), an American NGO. At WSP headquarters, Dr. D. Michael Shafer led a group of Rutgers professors, undergraduates, and recent graduates who joined 15 Mongolian students for an intensive two-week cross-cultural and activism training session. Through the first Global PACT training, we all built friendships, learned about activism, began to understand cross-cultural issues, and helped to strengthen our own democratic communities. Through our experience, we came to believe that everyone needs activism skills, and that anyone with these skills can absolutely make positive change.

As a result of this positive experience, the Mongolian and American team members decided to write a training manual that would allow others to experience the same process they had created for themselves. Working together, they created a Mongolian and English version of an activism training handbook to empower youth to organize effective community projects. This manual became the basis for the organization, Global PACT, which would train students worldwide to be positive forces of change.

Since 2002, multiple trainings have been conducted by the Mongolian students in their home region and by Rutgers students. Training sites include New Brunswick, New Jersey; Zagreb, Croatia and Grahamstown, South Africa to name a few.