The Global Student Leadership program at Manhattanville College unites young people from all over the world to live and learn together. The following article was written by Ann Marie Almeida, executive director of Global Student Leadership and Casey Kaufman, assistant account executive at Giles Communications.

When Tanzanian native Cleopatra Mukangara was selected to travel to New York in 2003 and take part in a unique program at Manhattanville College called Global Student Leadership, she had no idea how much of an impact the experience would have upon her life. But after six weeks of extensive course work, presentations, projects, and trips to sites such as the United Nations, as well as the experience of living in a dorm setting with other young people of highly different cultural backgrounds, Cleopatra discovered the global leader within herself.

Global Student Leadership (GSL) is an innovative Summer program offered by Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY to foster the next generation of active community leaders. It brings together young people from all over the world who live together, learn from one another, and participate in special training sessions for 3-6 weeks. The program is also offered at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, Africa.

The first GSL session was held in the Summer of 2000 at Manhattanville and included 28 female participants, between the ages of 18 and 24, from 15 different Latin American countries, each selected from a pool of over 1000 candidates. The program continued each Summer, with the first session held outside of the U.S. in Tanzania in 2005.

GSL’s mission is to help create a worldwide network of committed young people who will challenge agents at the local and global levels, using their leadership skills and confidence to identify key problems in global communities and define solutions for them.

The Mission of the Global Student Leadership (GSL) program is based on the concept of “entrepreneurship” that relies on ‘creative destruction’ to create long-run economic growth. It is related less to more recent definitions of ‘entrepreneurship’ which emphasize the taking of risk and more to converting new ideas into economic growth or social change. To be specific, GSL is designed to create a broad wellspring of local business and social leaders who seek to revitalize villages, communities and economies. These agents of social and economic change remain virtually connected over time and space and geometrically expand the reach of the GSL program by mentoring succeeding generations of young leaders. GSL does this by first conducting a pragmatic 6-week training program for aspiring leaders and entrepreneurs and, then, after rigorous evaluation, by providing venture capital in the form of microfinance support for the most promising business plans.

The program involves leadership and entrepreneurial training through a diverse curriculum that will prepare participants to pursue active leadership roles in their communities. Students gain strong communication, writing, and public speaking skills through close coaching from GSL teachers. The program challenges each participant to develop their own “action plan”- requiring them to identify a pressing issue within their community and design solutions for it.

Cleopatra dedicated her time to designing her “action plan” which she called “Installing Women in Technology” focused on tackling the lack of women in the IT industry in Tanzania. She was pushed further to continue developing her work into a plan that could actually be presented and taken seriously by influential individuals such as potential investors and community leaders. “I had to make sure that my plan would not remain just words on paper, but rather something that will be implemented and carried forward for the betterment of my community, “says Cleopatra, reflecting upon her experience.

Cleopatra Mukangara is now a successful consultant and business analyst for various projects with McGraw- Hill and Aetna’s Health Management Group in New York City. And continues to expand the depth and reach of her action plan as gains expereinece in the IT field.

Kivina Sophia participated in the GSL Africa workshop in 2007, at the University of Dar es Salaam, where she too was challenged to design an “action plan” which she named “Young Girls Awareness of Education.” Her goal was to inspire young girls to pioneer social change by acquiring traits such as independence, self-confidence, and strong decision making skills. She later visited various organizations that focus on this issue, hoping to gain sponsorship and funding. She is currently working with an education facility in Kondoa, discussing ways to implement her program into secondary schools for girls.

Cleopatra and Kivina demonstrate this program’s ability to transform and inspire, turning these young ladies into successful, influential individuals with the confidence and power to make changes in their respective cultures.

“The young people who come through the program develop problem-solving skills and receive business-related training that will allow them to really implement positive changes in the world,” says Ann Marie Almeida, Executive Director of Global Student Leadership at Manhattanville College. “We hope to have another successful session this Summer.”

To learn more about the Global Student Leadership Program, please visit http://www.gslnet.org/ or contact Ann Marie Almeida at almeidaa@mville.edu