Hasan Haj

Time flew. The 6 months since April passed quickly and I needed to get ready to fly to Romania. The second phase training of the global education program was about to start (in October).

The world is becoming smaller and smaller and each one of us has an impact that can affect other people around the globe. We all share the same resources and we all have only one planet.

The mixture, diversity and differences between cultures make us be more and more aware of these differences and to try to understand what is acceptable for each culture, respecting it and trying to adapt to the culture without loosing our values and identity.

Boycott, poverty porn, culture relativism, GMOs, global agenda and the global goals were the topics we addressed. We faced our biggest fears and made a commitment to make our best for our planet.

One of the questions during the sessions was “do we need to be responsible global citizens in order to be global educators?” 

My answer for the question was that one can be a global educator without being a responsible global citizen, but we will not sound authentic and we will not sound as someone who really believes what they are saying. I can hear when something is missing, when someone is speaking, and someone who does not believe in what he or she is saying cannot convince me.

We can develop ourselves as global citizens in parallel with being global educators, which will increase our responsibility to lead by example.

After the training we burned our fears and we made commitments to try as much as we can to increase awareness regarding different global issues, to be better global educators and most of all to lead by example as global citizens.

(the article reflects on the lessons learned during the project ‘Be part of worlds future’ – Long term training course on global education, implemented by Youth Dialogue Programme, from Serbia and A.R.T. Fusion Association, Romania)

Hasan Haj

Also read: Be part of the world future

The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of the author, and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of ALDA and the European Union.