Our Generation, Our Responsibility ConferenceOverview
The "Our Generation, Our Responsibility" Conference, to be held on October 8th at Georgetown University, is a student-led response to global inequality that will bring together DC area students to create methods for strong student support of the Millennium Development Goals. The target audience is student leaders and members of campus organizations who are involved with or interested in building a strong student effort towards understanding and advancing towards achieving the MDGs. Workshops highlight each of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and introduce networking strategies that students can utilize to contribute to reaching the MDGs locally and globally. The conference sets the stage for the initiation of a virtual forum designed for DC students to learn, share, and discuss the issues and how students from multiple campuses can better mobilize, coordinate and collaborate to support achieving the MDGs. The conference is open to all graduate and undergraduate students studying in the DC area.
Why is it special?
This Millennium Development Goals-based conference is unique and effective for four reasons: completely student planned, the inclusion of diverse campus groups, the DC-area specification and its Fall timing.
- Student-planned: From idea to reality, the process has been led and executed by undergraduate and graduate students from the DC area.
- Gathering Diverse groups that work for Betterment of others: The Millennium Development Goals are utilized as a framework to unite students who work purposefully towards achievements that advance the good of others, both in the US and internationally. This conference is for members of groups who have diverse interests and perform diverse actions, yet each -- in their way -- are concerned with and engaged in the betterment of others.
- DC-area: As students in the nation's capital, demographically speaking we have a higher percentage of students who will enter into politics, law, public service and NGOs. Therefore to educate "Our generation" in DC to make the MDG's "Our Responsibility" makes sense, because professionally speaking we will become achieve powerful roles, and it will be our responsibility in the near future, as it is now, to ensure the goals are met. This conference will emphasize specific ways that DC students and groups already support the MDGs, and will introduce the results-based thinking of the MDGs, to offer a global perspective for students to view their service, advocacy and research. By focusing marketing efforts on the DC area, we ensure that the intercampus relationships initiated at the conference can reasonably be sustained.
- Fall timing: Fall is a perfect time to educate students about the topics they are interested in so that they have a knowledge base from which students can begin to explore more deeply the areas of development that concern them. The students will be able to work more confidently on these topics throughout the rest of the school year. The fall is also a great time to introduce students to a new way of keeping connected and new ways of coordinating our group activities.
What will change?
- Increased student awareness of the Millennium Development Goals.
- workshops cover each goal
- distributing copies of the goals to each participant
- Ms. Carol Bellamy, CEO and president of World Learning, to speak of the MDGs' impact on the development community.
- New network and strategy for continued interaction and cooperation of students from different campuses.
- A forty-minute guided intercampus event/campaign planning component incorporated into each workshop will allow time to brainstorm collaborative events, lobby days, and community service initiatives.
- Locally relevant resource of experts and organizations for attendees to reference in the future, by including the speakers' contact information in the conference program.
- Inspiration to take action now, as their DC-area location makes them more able to shape national and international organizations.
The team creating the change
The conference planning team is comprised of 30 students from six DC campuses. Each person works to make this conference a well attended event with well planned workshops. They are currently recruiting speakers, planning the timelines of their workshops, crafting transportation plans to get their students to Georgetown and thinking of groups that they will market this conference to.
When is it?
Saturday, October 8, 2005
Where is it?
Georgetown University, Washington, DC. Find out more about logistics.
Who should attend?
Graduate and Undergraduate students as individuals and/or member of campus organizations who work on or are interested in learning about trade justice, gender equality, the role of religion in service, global health, mentoring, international careers that focus on helping others; anyone seeking to introduce themselves to or deepen their participation in the activist/service community of students who are working to create change now -- while they attend school.
What will I get out of it?
Workshops led by professionals, professionals and students; all from the DC area. Luncheon with representatives from over 30 organizations (campus groups, advocacy groups, volunteer opportunities) that have a base in the DC area. Time for collaborations to form commitments and plans for DC Student mobilization around specific movements.
The conference is free to Graduate and Undergraduate students.
The conference is being put on by UNICEF-Georgetown, a group of the Georgetown
University Center for Social Justice