Making Real-World Connections: Conversations with Local and global Communities on World Issues and Their Impact on Families
Join our First Gathering
On Thursday April 19, 2-3pm, in MHRA 2603 we will host our first meeting to begin discussions and forge the way forward. All faculty and students interested in conversations on issues that impact on local and global communities are welcome. For more information, contact Dr. Rachel Boit at rjboit@uncg.edu
Full Description
Communities differ world-wide and so are the experiences and issues impacting them. We can challenge ourselves by considering how these issues impacting communities in different parts of the world relate directly or indirectly to our experiences in our local communities. Today, most of our neighborhoods are a representation of world communities and therefore no extensive travels are required to experience firsthand the types of issues faced by people all over the world; rather we can learn about them from our global connections that are within reach, right in the backyard of our neighborhoods.
By engaging in dialogue and conversations with communities around us, we truly access a unique opportunity that allows for experiencing with new people and this grows and challenge our perspectives, as we strive to learn and make a difference in our world. This work will focus on learning about global problems at the local level where participants benefit from opportunities to learn with and from diverse and culturally diverse people. Through experiential learning and open discussions, participants become invested in their local community while at the same time grappling with far reaching problems that impact families all over the world and in the process, see firsthand how personal experiences are connected to universal ones.
Several topics will be explored in a learning community of faculty, staff, students and community members seeking to learn, understand and appreciate the vast cultural differences that exist within our communities and the many challenges impacting families in different parts of the world. The refugee population in Greensboro will be highlighted as the main source of understanding just one of the topical issues, amongst many that will be explored. The group will seek to address questions such as, what can we learn about refugees? Or, can we offer our time to effect change among refugee populations living amongst us? Other topics to explore may include, but not limited to, issues concerning the education of children, health issues, political issues, poverty, e.t.c. Seeing how people experience these aspects elsewhere in relationship to our experiences on the same, helps one to have a different and an informed world-view, thus shaping the way varied communities interact and make connections.
Whether it’s about the way we live, the way we talk; what we eat, wear, value, believe in e.t.c., there definitely are similarities and differences in these aspects that we interact with daily.
Dr. Rach
el J. Boit is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS). She currently teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the Birth through Kindergarten program within the HDFS department at UNCG and conducts research on early literacy development. Specific topic areas of research include, but not limited to: children and families from low-income communities; promoting literacy through home-school partnerships among refugee populations, and teacher-child relationships in cross-cultural contexts. Email rjboit@uncg.edu for more information about the global learning learning community.
