Student Global Engagement Fellow Alumni/ae: Where Are They Now?

Student Global Engagement Fellows are graduate and undergraduates from across the Open Society University Network who assist their peers in conceptualizing and producing civic engagement projects. This is the first in a series of articles telling the stories of student Global Engagement alumni/ae who have completed their fellowships. Fellows explain how they benefited from the experience and how the leadership skills they gained while participating not only enhanced their projects and careers, but also positively affected the communities they live in.

Huy Vu, Fulbright University, Vietnam 

“I know our generation is very ambitious, very demanding, and also very talented,” says Global Engagement Fellow Huy Vu, an OSUN Global Engagement Fellow from 2020 - 2023.

Vu's journey as a student Global Engagement Fellow began three years ago, but his civic engagement work started during childhood. Inspired by his mother’s work with ethnic minority people living in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, Vu founded YUU, a nonprofit originally designed to help organize a festival for children living in a nearby orphanage. 

“I have been running my civic engagement projects for seven years now and in the three years working with the Global Engagement Fellows, I learned a lot from other projects,” he says. For example, Vu has applied the model of a creative writing workshop started by Global Engagement Fellow Shadin Nassar to his work with ethnic minority groups.

Vu found that the student Global Engagement Fellowship not only bolstered his knowledge and skills, but also connected him to a variety of resources that helped sustain and strengthen his projects. “I work with Global Fellows from all around the world, and that has helped me foster my cultural understanding and cross cultural work,” he says.  

Wisdom Kalu, Ashesi University, Ghana 

A student Global Engagement Fellow from 2021-2022, Wisdom Kalu also feels that the fellowship was an opportunity to expand his work, learn more, and receive funding that was crucial to the success of his project. “The whole concept of being a Global Fellow was something that resonated with what I was already doing and allowed me to hone the skills I was already developing,” he says. 

Kalu's civic engagement journey began in 2015, after graduating from high school in Ghana. He worked with different nonprofit organizations and through that work learned about the concept of “giving back.” “We would go to schools where we would teach students about technology, entrepreneurship, and answer their questions,” he says. 

Then in 2018, while studying at Ashesi University, Kalu noticed students’ lack of tech and digital skills related to coding. That is when he started the project Code4All and shortly after heard about the student Global Engagement Fellowship. “I was doing something at a smaller scale and then here's this organization that can take what I'm doing and magnify the work to have a bigger impact, so I decided to go for it,” he explains. 

Being a Global Engagement Fellow also played a part in Kalu attending the Bard College Global Studies MA program. “The things I did and what I learned were the main driving force and inspiration behind me applying to the program,” he says. “I would say that was my greatest personal achievement, being here in this program”

Shadin Nassar, Al-Quds Bard College, Palestine 

Shadin Nassar, an student Global Engagement Fellow from 2019-2021, was an international law and human rights student who founded the artistic advocacy project Written Voices. The project uses creative writing as a tool to equip Palestinian refugees, women, children, and other vulnerable groups with the means for artistic self-expression, encouraging them to tell their own stories about the struggles of  living under prolonged occupation.

“I was very eager to develop a creative lens to address societal issues and my passion for amplifying the voices of youth as change agents was born,” says Nassar, who presented Written Voices at the Get Engaged Conference in 2019. Later, she was appointed as an OSUN Global Engagement Fellow for two years and then an OSUN Lead Global Engagement Fellow, assisting students in improving their effective leadership skills through workshops and training sessions. She currently serves as the civic engagement coordinator at Al-Quds Bard College, where she works to inspire future leaders to cultivate ideas for civic engagement projects responding to community needs. 

Nassar says the highlight of her student Global Engagement Fellowship was establishing a new skills-based and action-oriented project, the Monthly Civic Engagement Workshops. This project involved organizing interactive online workshops and crafting helpful materials to support students as they learned about project leadership, management, and sustainability.

“The Global Fellowship Program left a big imprint on my life,” adds Nassar. “It helped me discover my true potential as a change agent and shaped the person I am today.”

As the current cohort of student Global Engagement Fellows continue their work bringing positive changes to their communities and societies, OSUN will continue to share their inspiring stories. Stay tuned for more stories from student Global Engagement Fellows alumni/ae.

Post Date: 06-06-2023