Steven J. Green School of International & Public AffairsThrough the Global Learning Medallion I was able to attend a lot of events that opened my eyes to topics that I might not have known about otherwise. This experience gave me the opportunity to network with other like minded professionals in a familiar setting but it also gave me the confidence to outreach on my own. One particularly memorable experience I had was at a Tuesday Times Roundtable titled Building a Better Miami with Emani Jerome from the Knight Foundation. Mr. Jerome talked about something that was familiar to me; as someone born and raised in the 305 I understood and related to his experiences and the issues Miami faces as a community. He provided us with a myriad of helpful organizations and tools we could utilize in order to better ourselves and our city. The part that resonated with me the most was after he finished his presentation he made himself available to us; the students, there I thanked him for his time and asked for a business card and we began talking about other organizations in Miami that we were both familiar with. His friendliness and his ability to be approached is indicative of the type of person that I am striving for. Another event that had a large impact on me was the After Maria: The Two Shores film screening and discussion with Director Sonia Fritz. This event was hosted by the Cuban Research Institute and the Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs. The documentary showed scenes of Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria hit the island and simultaneously showed people who had fled the island specifically to Orlando, Florida. Although I am not Puerto Rican nor do I have any family there, the unity and sense of community that was so greatly displayed in the film gave me a sense of urgency for my own country of Venezuela. Although Venezuela was not hit with a natural disaster it is and has been experiencing an economic free fall for the past few years. There has been a mass exodus from Venezuela to neighboring countries in recent years because of this crisis. I am hopefully that one day the Venezuelan people can reunite in a safe country. My journey through a global lens started when I was very young but my enrichment of issues concerning foreign affairs, my thirst for learning, my desire to help others, my goal towards the amelioration of the planet has all be focused on and flourished tenfold thanks to my pilgrimage in the field of International Relations and the Global Learning Medallion program. |
"Be the change you want to see in the world."
-Mahatma Gandhi