Student Global Engagement Fellow Alumni/ae: Where Are They Now? (Part 2)

August 2, 2023

Student Global Engagement Fellows are a group of inspiring graduates and undergraduates who promote and execute impactful thematic civic engagement projects on their campuses and the communities they live in, across the Open Society University Network. During their fellowship, the Global Engagement Fellows demonstrate cross-cultural leadership skills by collaborating with student leaders around the world, supporting their social impact projects, and highlighting the importance of youth engagement with community issues.

This is the second article in a series telling the stories of student Global Engagement alumni/ae who have completed their fellowship and now reflect on the experience and how it shaped their personal development journey.



Walid Azizi, American University of Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan

Walid Azizi, a graduate student from the American University of Central Asia (AUCA), was part of the 2021-22 Global Engagement Fellowship Program. His civic engagement project, Camp Afghanistan, was initiated in 2018 with a vision to empower youth in his home country by providing educational programs and leadership initiatives to help develop skills students can use throughout their lives. A week-long program, Camp Afghanistan aims to prepare high school students for study abroad opportunities while instilling in them the importance of civic engagement and a responsibility for educating fellow community members. Camp Afghanistan became Azizi’s fellowship project while he also served as the campus leader of the Global Fellows at AUCA.

Azizi believes that “In a liberal arts education system, learning is not solely focused on the typical experience of sitting in a class and completing assignments, it is also about responsibilities that come with knowledge – as citizens and as critical students.” He says the Global Engagement Fellowship empowered him to help students on his campus gain greater access to civic engagement, from OSUN virtual courses to microgrants, monthly workshops, conferences, and forums that help them explore civic responsibility in theory and in practice.

In August 2021, after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, AUCA initiated an evacuation plan with the support of OSUN. During the evacuation from Kabul to Bishkek, Azizi led a group of students and contributed to evacuation arrangements. As soon as he arrived in Bishkek, despite his own evacuation trauma, Azizi joined the Afghan Response Team to help move remaining Afghan students from Kabul to Bishkek.
 
“Hearing about each group's success in crossing the Pakistani border (during the evacuation) was such a release, but only for a few minutes, as we had to focus on the next group coming the next night," he says.  As a result, the team made it possible for about 200 students to arrive in Bishkek where they could resume their studies.

When the Get Engaged conference was held in Bishkek in 2022, Azizi joined the program as a mentor to help students initiate their projects. He was impressed by the active engagement of students across OSUN's campuses, reinforcing his belief that civic engagement plays a vital role in liberal arts education.

As the current cohort of student Global Engagement Fellows continues their work bringing positive changes to their communities and the regions they live in, OSUN will continue to share their inspiring stories. Stay tuned for more stories from student Global Engagement Fellows alumni/ae.

Sundus Al Fararja, Al-Quds Bard College for Arts and Sciences, Palestine

“There are global problems that people are suffering from and we need to start initiatives that make small steps in the progress of change in the world,” says Sundus Al-Fararja, a 2020-21 student Global Engagement Fellow alum from Al Quds Bard College (AQB) in Palestine. Reflecting on her fellowship, Al Fararja sees how the student engagement experience shaped her point of view and her professional career path. Since she completed the fellowship, “I want to engage with people and I don't want to be an office worker. The internship clarified my choices,” she says. 

Three years ago, Al Fararja decided to propose her community projects to AQB leadership, and Daniel Terris, AQB’s dean, suggested she enroll in OSUN’s Civic Engagement course. The course instructors gave her guidance on starting her civic engagement project, Womenity, a women's rights club based at AQB. The course instructors also encouraged Al Fararja to apply to be a Global Engagement Fellow, as she was eager to meet other leaders and gain more experience from the network.

Interacting with other fellows has broadened Al Fararja's knowledge of and approach to social issues on both the local and global level. “Before I became a Global Fellow, it was a little bit difficult to realize the problems we are trying to solve on a macro level. I thought that this information was theoretical and not related to real life,” she says. “After becoming a Global Fellow, I saw similarities between what other fellows and I were doing, regardless of geographical distance, race, or cultural difference. I began to understand how I was participating in a broader youth movement driving social change.”

Al Fararja is now working with Law for Palestine, a nonprofit organization connected to the International Court of Justice, where she translates legal materials into Arabic. Interested in international law and human rights, Al-Fararja also continues to build the Womenity project while developing her leadership skills, focusing on social issues in her community and the region.

Lorraine Makuyana, Ashesi University, Ghana 

Lorraine Makuyana, a 2021-22 student Global Engagement Fellow alum from Ashesi University in Ghana, was excited about the idea of an international network connecting like-minded student leaders involved in finding solutions for their communities' issues.
 
Ashesi University's interdisciplinary curriculum fostered Makuyana's sense of civic responsibility, encouraging her to specialize in solving social problems in her community. By applying problem-solving and design-based skills, Makuyana developed My Vision Initiative, a program focused on reducing teenage pregnancy among adolescent girls in high school in Zimbabwe.

She was eager to collaborate with international student leaders across OSUN to strengthen her leadership on this challenge.  "I wanted to be part of a program and I wanted to work with peers to improve my project so I could globalize the impact I was trying to make in the community," Makuyana says.

During her fellowship, Makuyana attended the 2022 Get Engaged Conference as a student mentor. She benefited from meeting student leaders from around the world, helping them develop new community-based initiatives. Listening to others’ projects, Makuyana took notes to enhance her project development but also shared notes with other project leaders, giving them insights from her experience.  “I was able to see how students solve their community problems and how I might tap into what they are doing so I could map it to what I was doing in my community,” she says. 

Since completing her fellowship and graduating from Ashesi University, Makuyana now works as a software engineer, but her passion for civic engagement continues. Womenity has expanded, empowering more than 30 girls. And the materials she encountered during Global Engagement Fellows’ Civic Engagement Monthly Workshops she now uses  to train her work team in better operations and community engagement.

Reflecting on her experience, Makuyana advises the aspiring fellow and student leader to “be open, be curious, and be yourself. You don't know what's going to happen and all projects, challenges, and activities you have in the fellowship might bring you the necessary resources in the future. You can only know the result at the end of the day, and realize how revolutionary the experience can be.”

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