Developing Global Citizens? Possibilities and Problems of Youth-Conference Programming

Developing Global Citizens? Possibilities and Problems of Youth-Conference Programming

Youth for Global Engagement (YGE) is a summer program assembling late adolescents from diverse geographic locales to converse and create projects to be carried out upon homecoming. We engaged a mixed-methods study to gain insight about the development of global citizenship knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors among participants over one year. Participants engaged in pre and post-surveys, interviews on-site and we observed learning activities and read participantgenerated objects. Three themes illustrate how participants interpreted global citizenship through the course of the study: (1) development of open-mindedness (2) shift from individualist to cooperative analysis and (3) feelings of isolation and anxiety among South participants. Implications can be drawn for similar youth-programming practices as well as global education efforts generally.