Global Changemakers

On the fourth day all the participants finally had a day in London city centre. Few of the Changemakers had the privilege to go to Number 10 and meet with British PM Gordon Brown personally. They were chosen before the summit (they literally picked names out of a hat  because of the security reasons) so I didn’t really had a shot of actually meeting Mr. Brown but the fact itself that some Changemakers talked to him is impressive in my opinion.

Many participants are thinking about starting their own organizations, NGOs or charities and that is why each one of us attended an established organization in London. I chose Oxfam which currently focuses on climate change and community development issues. Oxfam has this interesting campaign called “Wave” that wants to get people pumped about the coming climate change summit in Copenhagen. We actually had a hand in their campaign and filmed a little promotional clip doing an international wave - we set up a little domino line of paper booklets. Other Changemakers visited other amazing and inspiring organizations like 10:10, Kids Company, Save the Children, Global Generation, Crisis and so on. Each one of those deserve a separate blog post altogether.

In the evening the Changemakers had a reception with members of British government like members of parliament. They were really impressed by our activism and strong track record. It’s always important to have that recognition at the highest levels.

During the week the Changemakers were creating small sketches on various topics such as addiction, mental disability, gender equality, cultural differences and so on. It’s great to see that people from as diverse countries like Iraq, France, Australia, Saudi Arabia etc. can get together and make something fun and creative. Art is truly universal.

Summit has come to its inevitable end and all the participants had either individually or in groups present their CAP (Community Action Project) ideas. I was blown away by some of them because a lot of them were really ambitious. For example, creating a global youth network “Arts Without Borders” ala “Doctors Without Borders”. Normally you’d say that person is a bit dreamy in thinking that they could make something like that reality if they’re 16 or around that age but the Changemakers have proven it to be wrong in the past and I’m sure gonna do it again in the future. I am confident that by next year a lot of these CAP ideas will become reality and start changing the life of people around the globe.