Global Leaders' goal is to help the leaders of tomorrow become globally aware citizens who have developed the tools needed to create necessary change. Through real-world educational opportunities and training founded in community service-learning, GL offers its students the opportunity to expand their approaches and cultivate their skills to actively and positively shape the world they live in thr
ough a yearlong leadership development program. In Colorado GL has developed lasting relationships with the Fort Collins Community, participating in partnerships with Respite Care, Irish Elementary, Putnam Elementary, Shire Farms, and Hope Farms. In some cases, as with the tutoring program at Irish, these service programs have been imagined, developed and implemented by the students themselves, through the Student Action Grants program. In California, students work with their differently-abled peers in the revived Pride Pals program at Menlo-Atherton High School, participate in beach clean-ups, and partner with Collective Roots to bring environmental awareness and food justice to the Palo Alto area. Both the California and Colorado programs invite students to captain their leadership journey by becoming a part of the Executive Boards. Executive Boards lead their peers to brainstorm new service projects, facilitate existing service projects, and encourage teambuilding with in the group in order to create change. GL was created with the idea to extend the traditional classroom into the outside world. Since 1996, GL has traveled yearly to Guatemala to participate in a two-week international service immersion trip. There, the students work closely with local community members to volunteer in an orphanage, build schools and participate in reforestation programs. This year GL will also offer a similar trip to Ghana where students will be able to participate in service projects there, as well. With the development of more dedicated local programming, GL students collectively complete over a thousand of hours of service-learning work yearly in the local community. Over the years in Guatemala, GL students have constructed 17 primary schools, collected and distributed hundreds of shoes, planted over 20,000 trees in the now-reforested hills around Antigua, and logged thousands of Spanish language hours.
