Our Mission & History

Mission & History | What is Activism? | Global PACT Philosophy | Staff

Mission Statement

Global PACT is building an international network of global citizens to take on the world's problems. We offer hands-on trainings and demanding internships that use real-life challenges to teach the skills global citizens need to collaborate across borders and cultures to meet human needs wherever they arise. Global PACT in non-ideological, non-partisan and embraces the glorious diversity of the world's cultures, colors and religions.

History

At Global PACT you learn by doing. Yes, CNN, the internet and cheap airfares have made the world seem smaller. But if you suddenly found yourself in one of the tiny villages or teeming metropolises where the world’s 5.4 billion poor live, just how much good would those Discovery Channel documentaries do you? Exactly.

At Global PACT we think that this realization is hugely important for people like you, because you are the kind of person who wants to change the world. But you can’t learn how to do that from TV either.

The knowledge, skills and essential problem solving attitude you need to make change can be learned only by doing. We know this, because we learned them by doing, too. In fact, Global PACT began in the summer of 2002 with eight Rutgers students who wanted to learn if it really was possible to change the world.

To do this, they went to the literal opposite side of the world – Ulan Batar, Mongolia – where they joined fifteen Mongolian students in two weeks of discussion and debate. Is community organizing universal or culturally bounded? Are the underlying concepts of grassroots democracy and citizen responsibility universal or culturally bounded? Who is “in” a community and who is “out”? How are “in” and “out” defined? Can organizing and engaged citizenship be taught in an “unloaded” way? Can small, multicultural teams be taught to work together? Can they produce real, grassroots change?

These questions were hotly contested; no agreement came easily. Mongolia had just emerged from decades of Soviet rule. Some team members’ families had been associated with the Russians; others’ families had been excluded “Mongolians”. The Rutgers team included newly naturalized American citizens “of color” and Americans whose families traced their roots back to the Revolution. Where every member of both teams started sure that (s)he understood how the world worked, within days each felt as if everything was up for debate.

Lost tempers, cross-cultural misunderstandings, lack of sufficient translation – in short, everything that (by design) plagues Global PACT programs today and real world interactions every day – mark the progress of that first “Global PACT” program. It was so successful that when it was over, the teams decided to collaborate to write a Mongolian and English handbook and training program for community activists.

The Mongolian team has run programs all over the country, including in the camps of nomads, and several members of the team have gone on to important public careers. The Rutgers team went on to found Global PACT.

Since 2002, the excitement generated by Global PACT Mongolia inspired people and organizations across the world. Our training and philosophy of education has led to over thirty Global PACT trainings conducted on five continents - and in every community in which Global PACT has worked our participants' projects continue to improve the quality of life.

With support from such organizations as East-East, Open Society Institute, Prudential Foundation and the United States Institute of Peace, we have run trainings in Zagreb, Croatia, 2004-2006, and Vukovar, Croatia, 2007-Present, South Africa 2006-Present, Thailand 2007-Present, Cambodia 2008-Present, and Brazil 2008-Present. In January 2011 Global PACT will offer its first program in Santiago, Chile.

Today the Global PACT network of Global Citizens circles the world. Almost 1,000 members come from more than fifty countries, hundreds of cultures, speak a remarkable number of languages and practice every major religion in the world and many less well known.

Global PACT's Continued Growth

However successful Global PACT trainings have been, they have always had one weakness. After every training, our NGO partners ask, "Can you get us more help like that?" and the participants ask, "Can you find us placements with NGOs like that?"

To respond to these requests, in 2008 Global PACT launched an internship program. The Global PACT internship program is based on the same principles as the educational programs. We offer placements with only a small number of NGOs that we have known and worked with for years. Each NGO is a model of organizational professionalism and is engaged in direct, effective and sustainable community development. Like Global PACT educational programs, Global PACT internships provide deep immersion in local culture, hands-on involvement with real programming, and high expectations of personal responsibility taking.