Before I progress on this topic, I like to explain the key words in the topic. Think globally means put the globe i.e. the world in your perspective when taking decisions. Act Locally means impart on your constituency i.e. surroundings where you find yourself. Leadership Initiatives means actions that ordinarily emanates from a leader. My environment is my surrounding.
A leader is a director who acts to achieve set goals. He takes up lead roles which others around him consciously or unconsciously follow. An ideal leader is a liberal man, unselfish in his ways. He always aim to be on top of the game.
The phrase Think Globally Act Locally has often been used by environmentalists to sum up a strategy devoted to conserving the earth’s scare resources at the local level. The phrase originated from Rene Dubos, an advisor to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972. More recently, business executives borrowed the idea to emphasis on the need for building capability at the country or regional level even as they pursue global growth. But now the millennial generation i.e. Americans born between 1982 and 2003 are giving the phrase on entirely new meaning as they intensify efforts to change the world – one local community at a time.
The millennials are optimists who never give in to threats but rather look for a liberal way of providing solutions to challenges. Millennials’ ability to make virtual friends instanteously on facebook or h5 with Iranian protesters provides a practical example of the generation’s pragmatic approach to solving puzzles.
Think Globally, Act Locally: Leadership Initiatives for Me and My Environment for the purpose of this workshop is all about deciding to start paying attention to your surroundings, asking yourself, what is happening in the neighbourhood? What are the problems my country is facing? Why are the problems there? What quota can I contribute to solve the problems?
How can l help that boy in my class that has stopped coming to school because he could not pay his school fees anymore? Should l tell my daddy or my pastor of his case? If they cannot pay his school fees, they could know someone who can help or even offer the boy a scholarship. By so caring, you have blessed a life with a fortune, an action which will have a multiplier effect on the society.
Think Globally and Act Locally is a call to individuals particularly youths to engage themselves actively in issues affecting them. You should ask yourself who do l want to be. Which career do l want to pursue? How does it benefit me? Will being a doctor be profitable to my family? Will it make a positive impart on the society, my country and the world at large.
Chinnamanda Adiche, a Nigerian writer who won the Orange prize in 2007, an international award must have had the global perspective of imparting on her environment, her country and the world at large which she succeeded in achieving. She did her country proud by winning an international award.
The greatest threat that the Nigerian youth face today is exclusion and marginalisation in issues affecting their lives. Youths are the promise of the future and failure to invest in them poses great constrain on the potential for future development. The need to make youths centre of the decision making process on issues affecting their lives cannot be underestimated. Although the need for youths’ active participation in issues affecting their lives, informed the advent of the Convention on the Right of the Child (CRC) and the Child Right Act (which has proved so far to be nothing but another window dressing project of the Nigerian government) not much has been done by the government to make youths play a significant role in issues affecting them.
I will end this talk with the story of Sara. Sara is a little girl of 17 years old. She volunteered to be an interpreter for an NGO which is into adult literacy for village women somewhere in the eastern part of Nigeria. After serving the NGO for a considerable period of time, she got a scholarship to study medicine abroad. It was the track record of her humanitarian service to the villagers that earn her the visa to make her dream come true.
I conclude by saying that the decision to give concern to your environment, to help somebody somewhere and thereby make a positive impart on the society and the world will turn around to make your an ICON, someone to be celebrated.
Thank you.
A presentation made by Omokemi Akinbodunse, a legal practitioner in September 2009 at GET GLOBAL 2009, an annual programme organised for teenagers by Human Development Initiatives (HDI), a Nigerian non profit organisation based in Lagos.
