EF Academy students at the Global Leadership Summit in Peru in March.
By Anna Platt
Anna Platt is an American student studying the IB Diploma program at EF Academy Oxford. She will graduate in 2018 and plans to study Education at university.
On Friday, March 16, a group of international students gathered in Lima, Peru for the 2017 Global Leadership Summit where they discussed how globalisation is impacting our changing world. We spent the weekend making projects that would somehow impact globalisation, and hearing from wonderful keynote speakers about how globalisation is impacting our classrooms, our workplaces, and our world. We collaborated and innovated, and, my personal favourite part of the weekend, we explored the culture of Lima.
An important part of globalisation is the ability we now have to be able to experience other cultures, whether it be organically, through educational documentaries, or classroom and workplace activities. This exploration of culture opens new doors for us as human beings to become more culturally competent and, as a result, more accepting. On our first night in Lima, we went to a modern art museum (the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, or the MAC) in downtown Miaflores, Lima. The art was incredible, but my favourite part was the “seviche” and the salsa dancing. The seviche, of course, was delicious, and the dancing was wonderful, even though my dancing in particular wasn’t so great. But talking to the Peruvian natives working there, I was inspired and elated. I live in the United Kingdom, and while I love it, the culture is more closed off and a bit cold. People tend to keep to themselves and rarely do you have conversations with strangers. In Peru, however, people were excited to hear about my experiences. Everyone I spoke to wanted to hear how I liked Peru, wanted to complain about the weather, and wanted to help me learn a few more words in Spanish. People were so warm.
Throughout the weekend, we had more cultural experiences. A dance crew preformed for us as an opener for day two of our conference. We received bracelets woven in a mountain village by a group of women who are bringing back traditional weaving techniques. We were taught how to weave our own bracelets, and had workshops on how the textile industry has been an integral part of Peruvian culture for hundreds of years. We learned about Inca history and we experienced local cuisine and people. The culture of Peru is vibrant and beautiful, and I’ve never fallen in love with a country quicker.
Along with this cultural adventure, we also had discussion on globalisation and how it affects culture. Dr. Wade Davis, a Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia and one of the keynote speakers at the conference, touched on how languages are lost as a result of globalisation. We witnessed this first-hand with the use, or lack of use, of Quechan, Peru’s second native language. Quechan is an Inca language, and it was almost lost during the Spanish colonisation of Peru. But now it’s making a comeback, and it’s even spoken in schools today. This is the wonderful thing about the Global Leadership Summit experience. Not only are you told about things like language loss and cultural expression, you can witness it first-hand.
This idea of globalisation was also furthered by the different nationalities of students at the conference. As an EF Academy student, and one of very few students from the United States at my EF campus, I am constantly surrounded by people from different countries and cultures. But what made this conference special for me was that we came together with the explicit goal of sharing how globalisation has impacted our lives. We were encouraged to talk about how cultures had impacted us, and the messages from the keynote speakers were only further validated by the conversations we had about how language might be fading from our own communities, and the discussions of differences in politics, culture, and amenities we might have in our home countries. The international aspect of the leadership summit is what makes it so successful and informative; not only do you hear about how culture impacts lives, you see and experience it for yourself. With the different narratives we see there, in a place where not everyone comes from the same school, city, or even country, we can begin to understand the diverse world we live in more clearly, and we can recognize, as Dr. Davis said in his enlightening speech on day two of the conference, “that other cultures are not failed attempts at being us.”
All in all, the global leadership summit was an incredible experience. I felt my horizons were truly broadened by the beautiful culture I was able to be a part of, if only for a weekend. The conference itself was a wonderful way to increase cultural sensitivity, and my understanding of the way globalisation affects people from walks of life different than mine. The setting only served to perfectly compliment this learning experience. I learned a lot about Peruvian culture, about globalisation, and I learned quite a bit about myself.