Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Official Report 704KB pdf

---

Time for Reflection

Good afternoon. I am Kamal Akil from Lebanon.

In the US, we held a hunger banquet to help educate community members about hunger. For a little more than an hour, students and community members got a taste of the different levels of hunger and how they could become global citizens and take action.

As global citizens, we believe in a better world and want to be a part of the solution. We are the future of this world, and it is our responsibility to ensure a better future for generations to come. Global citizens are the change. This is why we believe that awareness—

Plus action—

Equals impact.

We are here today as representatives of the global citizens corps—GCC—a youth initiative by Mercy Corps.

GCC unites youth leaders around the world to take action on global issues such as climate change, hunger and disease. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, we should be the change that we wish to see in the world.

Through global interaction in the form of video conferences, online dialogues and festivals, we as GCC leaders are working to overcome cultural barriers in order to surpass the geographical boundaries of our communities to promote the concept of belonging to a global village.

In Lebanon, for example, we organised a marathon to help end world hunger. People in countries all over the world, including in Baghdad and Gaza, participated in the event to help people who suffer from hunger.

In Iraq, the global citizen corps lobbied the Government for water rights. In Gaza, students organised a community clean-up to remove grass from their streets. These activities are samples of hundreds of actions that GCC leaders have taken across the world to raise awareness and promote change.

Good afternoon. As always on a Wednesday, the first item of business this afternoon is time for reflection. I am pleased to welcome our time for reflection leaders today, who are Kamal Akil and Caley Gallison from the middle east youth festival.

And I am Caley Gallison from the United States.

Global citizens are open minded and take many views into consideration. The idea of the GCC is to create a worldwide network of youth leaders to generate a larger impact. In order for things to be accomplished, people have to work together and become interdependent. GCC started as a seed and planted a global garden—in the US, the UK, Lebanon, Pakistan, Jordan, Iraq, Gaza and Indonesia. The hope is that the GCC will expand further to become a truly global network.

A bird flapping its wings in the US can cause a storm in Lebanon. This is what the GCC is about: even the smallest actions have a worldwide impact.

Instead of waiting around for others to solve the problems, we as GCC leaders take the initiative to make a difference. If every human being was a global citizen, war would be replaced by peace, no human being would be in poverty, and the policy concerning a death penalty for homosexuals in Uganda would not even be in consideration because 6 billion global citizens would not be comfortable sitting at home while others were suffering.

We are global citizens.