Lloyd Kornelsen of Global College

"...when I think of a global citizen, it's someone who appreciates the significant challenges we are facing as a planetary society; in the area of human rights, environmental degradation, issues of community and social development, globally as well as locally."

The Organization –

Global College is an action-oriented, multi-disciplinary forum for Canadian and International students which brings students and community members together with local faculty, visiting scholars and speakers from around the world and engages them in sharing their diverse perspectives about issues of global citizenship, human rights, and issues affecting the planet. The goal of this dialogue is for people to discover their role within the local and global community, and to better recognize and understand the rights and responsibilities of individuals in a changing world.

Global college encourages and supports innovative, interdisciplinary work by faculty directed toward greater understanding of ethics, human rights and global issues.

Global College is involved in a number of community projects, including: Canada's World, a non-partisan citizens' dialogue focused on creating a new vision for Canadian international policy; Community Integration, a research and social action project whose goal is to identify and overcome the obstacles and barriers faced by the Lost Boys and Girls of Sudan in Manitoba; and Human Rights City, a local response to an initiative created by the People’s Movement for Human Rights in conjunction with the United Nations Development Programme.

The Bio –

Lloyd Kornelsen has an advanced degree in Adult Education and, after many years of teaching high school, was the acting executive director of Global College. He held this position for exactly one year, and left on sabbatical in June/08 to pursue a Ph.D. in the faculty of Education at University of Manitoba, in Peace Studies, with an ad hoc connection to the Arthur Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice. Among other things, Lloyd has been involved locally on the Human Rights City Task Force, as a keynote speaker to the First Annual Peace Festival Soiree, and as a guest speaker to student activist groups.

The Interview –

I met with Lloyd Kornelsen on May 1/08, in his office in the Rice Building, adjacent to the University of Winnipeg. His experience and interests are, appropriately, in the area of global citizenship.

LK – I have taken gr.11 and 12 interested students to Costa Rica to work in small communities and live with local families. It took us 7 or 8 months to prepare for these trips. What I’m interested in is this; there are a number of programs like this, where you have an opportunity to go live and work elsewhere, and I want to look at how effective these programs are for global citizenship and learning, and what difference it makes to lives of young people. Is there something significant that happens that alters their life trajectory, and if so, what exactly is it? We are spending millions of dollars on international global citizenship programs and, as professionals, when we are allocating resources to these things, you want to know exactly what kind of impact it has; how effective it is in developing global citizenship. Very often it’s ill-defined. At Global College, that’s what our program is all about, Global Citizenship, and what does it means.

DC – What does Global College mean when they use that term, Global Citizenship?

LK – Well, I think it means something different for whoever uses the term. Generally when I think of a global citizen, it’s someone who appreciates the significant challenges that we are facing as a planetary society; in the area of human rights, environmental degradation, issues of community and social development, globally as well as locally. When you talk about global issues they do impact locally; and locally all of us together collectively make up the forces that impact the globe. When we’re talking about global citizenship, that’s what I understand the term to mean. Ah, but to be a global citizen, what does that mean? Does that mean in terms of how we see the world, particularly how we treat others? How we are educating people? How we treat the more vulnerable in our societies? How we deal with global issues? How we deal with disagreements, fundamental disagreements? How we live in communities, and how we organize ourselves?

I think at the base of this what is really important is media. Pretty much everything we know about the world beyond our own experience comes through the mass media, and it’s a lens which filters information. I think that as an educator, one of my responsibilities is to deconstruct that lens for students. Who owns / controls the mass media, and what are their interests? Knowing that, how can I best use that lens to inform myself about what’s going on? Right now most of the media are controlled by commercial interests. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but there is an abiding interest. That impacts everything from who is hired to report, to how they report the news, to how the events are portrayed, to what events are talked about and communicated, to what may seem to be important and what is not.

For example: What are the terms that we use to describe people who are different from us, who threaten us? Back when I was a high school student, one term used for the enemy was “communist”, and that carried a whole set of meanings. If you deconstruct that term it can mean all sorts of things. As we got to be a little less fearful, and came to understand why people call themselves communist, or have communist ways of organizing their society we realized it didn’t necessarily mean that it’s evil. We use other terms like that today, too, I think often times too quickly.

DC – To polarize.

LK – To polarize, exactly. Whether the terms be “terrorist”, or something else.

DC – It’s Us and Them.

LK – Exactly, and there again, going back to global citizenship education, I looked at providing a way to break down the idea of the “other”. The very first time I took students to Costa Rica… I don’t know if you have time to hear my story…

DC – Go ahead.

LK – Well, the point was, at the end of that experience, my students no longer talked about the poor people of Costa Rica that needed help. They had become family. “They taught us so much. We had nothing more to offer them than they did us.” Well, it then becomes a whole lot more difficult to support governments who, through actions on our behalf, will hurt other people if they are part of our family. They are part of our global family. We use those terms a lot, we say global family, but whether in practice we actually think that, I’m not sure. I think global citizenship starts with the breaking down of the idea of “other”.

DC –What do you see as the most important impact that Global College has had?

LK – As a place for dialogue. For example, last week we had Samantha Nutt, of War Child Canada, visit Global College and UW. She was here as a part of a speaking engagement, and we organized a luncheon of interested university community members, and we had an absolutely terrific dialogue. There were about 20-25 people there. Dr. Axworthy was there, Global College representatives, university students, and Samantha Nutt, and it was a terrific time. For about an hour and a half we sat and listened to Samantha talk, discussed some of the issues, some of the challenges, implications for Canadians… it was one of those dialogues that we have about being a global citizen. It was community building and it was also awareness building, and consciousness raising. That evening she spoke at UW’s Convocation Hall and we sent out invites. We had about a hundred folks, again from a cross section of the community, listen to her presentation. There was an opportunity for questions for about an hour after her talk. There was a photo display set up for War Child Canada. That to me represents, symbolizes, what Global College is: bringing people in the community together to talk about global issues, and bring in visitors, dignitaries, researchers, who are out there in the world doing their work and bringing their experiences and knowledge back here, to share, to talk, for local benefit and awareness.

DC – Yes. I heard her speak at the Manitoba Human Rights Commission with a meeting of high school students, too, and she was very interesting. She spoke about those global connections between individuals and the larger issues that are happening, and she spoke about the Congo and the mineral that is being mined there unethically, that is used in all our cell phones, and are we aware of this?

LK – Yes, exactly. How our actions affect people in other countries in many ways, and we ought to know that, but do we really know that unless we have the opportunity to go behind the scenes? This decision to purchase, whatever it is we are contemplating, does have a very real effect on someone else, on other communities.

The other piece is that, we kind of pride ourselves in involving youth in many of our conversations; for most of our events we have a youth engagement component to it. For example, last December was the 10th anniversary of the Ottawa Treaty to Ban Landmines, and the youth symposium aspect of that, the focus of that conference, was we brought in high school students from across the province to talk about the Treaty to Ban Landmines. They addressed two questions: One, how effective has the treaty been, the impact globally? And second, the process used to bring about that treaty was pretty novel and brought together civil society and government, so can that process be used to address other global issues and challenges? We spent a whole day. We brought in speakers, from Cambodia, the Landmines Foundation, Dr.Axworthy, to talk about the issues, and the students spent the afternoon at workshops addressing those questions. That night the students drafted a document which three representatives took to two large international conferences on landmines, one in Waterloo, one in Ottawa.

The point of the conference, as well as one of our objectives at our Human Rights Conference, was to approach youth and say we’re doing this conference, and it’s going to be more than just talking. There are interested folks in positions of power, and they want to hear what you have to say on this issue.

DC – Moving from dialogue to action.

LK – Exactly. Having spent years in high school teaching, and especially with young people who tend to be very, very conscientious, there’s that frustration; we can sit here, we can talk, we can learn, but what really does it mean? Why are we doing this? If there’s no action, there’s no change in behaviour, what’s the point? And that’s an objective here at Global College. Yeah, let’s talk, we need to be informed, we should be aware, but what action are we taking because of this conversation? How can we, practically, make an impact that leads to effective change and influence people with power to do this change?

We’ve got a conference coming up in November, where we hope to make a response to a report by United Nations Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor. The focus of the report is the Developing World: How legal systems and access to justice for the poor are a necessary component to development. But, there’s a caution here about our own society. How can this report inform our own society? We know there are impediments to accessing the justice system in our own communities. What can we learn from this report, to help facilitate a more just / equitable access to the “system”? In addition to involving the academic, legal community, and post-secondary community, we are also looking to get youth involved in the conference, in a meaningful way.

DC – Do you think that it is sometimes easier for people to think about and talk about issues that are “over there”, in some other place or country, than it is to really deal with local issues? What’s been your experience with that?

LK – Well, I’m not sure. Coming back to the CLEP conference, day one will be devoted to about talking about issues “over there”; we’re going to bring in one or two commissioners from abroad. In the afternoon, post-secondary educators of history, economics, international development studies, education will talk about the implications for international development education, given this report. Then, on day two, we are going to bring people from across the city, from Manitoba, and talk about, “OK we’ve talked about the South, now what does the UN report mean for our own communities?” I’m thinking there’s going to be as much if not more interest. Certainly, in my experience, in high schools and university, students enjoy talking about the issues here (locally) as well - issues of violence and poverty, environmental degradation. They see the importance. But whether we’re going to take action or not, I don’t know the answer to that; I hope so.

DC – It’s a challenge.

LK – Yeah. Coming back to taking students to Costa Rica, we spent eight months talking about development, the meaning of development. Costa Rica is a developing country; it’s done extremely well; the government took some important decisions about 40 or 50 years ago. On 1/10th the GDP per capita that Canada has, it has developed a fully functioning health care system, one of the highest rates of literacy in the Developing world. …. So we get to talk about the meaning of development. Then we go to Costa Rica, we spend a few weeks there, stay with families, working on community development projects – and thinking and talking about development. When we get back, students are able to see some of our own development challenges to which they had been blind before; I don’t know if they’d been able to see that if they had not left here. And they are motivated to take action, here.

There are many different ways of living in the world; if we experience these other ways, then maybe that helps us to recognize that our way of living isn’t superior. There is work to be done in our own backyard. At the beginning of the Global Citizenship course in September, I had students write essays about why they want to travel to Costa Rica and participate in a Global Citizenship program. Often times there tended to be a bit of a patronizing tone, “Why I want to be involved is because I can go help poor people in Costa Rica.” After that experience, having lived with a family in Costa Rica, that attitude was replaced with, “Here I thought I wanted to go to Costa Rica to help people, and that wasn’t the case at all. Yeah, we spent some time working on community development projects, but I learned so much from the people that lived and worked with that I thought would be different, and yet they were so much like my own family; I learned from them; about how families are different or not, about how the environment there is valued, about my consumerist attitudes and behaviour that I didn’t think I had.” The students come back with a very different view of their own society and of the world and I think they become more participatory; they have become more global citizens.

DC – I’m going to pause here and get back to Global College. You have six institutes here, could you talk a little bit about the projects going on in the institutes?

War-affected Children: which has teach-ins scheduled for next summer (09) on compassionate listening. An education course this summer will involve a mock-up of a refugee centre on the front lawn of Wesley Hall (on Portage).

Literacy and Transformative Learning: which focuses on learning through action and reflection. It held a number of teach-ins this past winter, is developing an activist internship course, and planning for a summer institute in the summer of (09)

Human Rights and Global Studies: which has just completed a summer institute on Ethics and Globalization; and is facilitating the inauguration of our new Human Rights degree.

Political and Cultural Studies of the Americas: which has just completed a summer institute on the history of migration and development; and is planning a related course next summer.

Health and Human Potential: which is planning for a continuation of a summer institute series on infectious diseases. The institute is also involved in student exchanges for capacity building to curb HIV / AIDS.

Women’s and Gender Studies Institute: which recently completed a very successful symposium called Art Building Community, a second conference in our series on Global Citizenship conferences. The symposium attracted participants from across North America.

Also, our Human Rights Degree is the first human rights and global studies degree in Western Canada. We’ve attracted a lot of interest in it since we announced it about six weeks ago. We’ve been having a lot of inquiries, a lot of students signing up for it, from as far away as Chile.

DC – How do you define Transformative Learning?

LK – I was hoping you wouldn’t ask me that! Transformative Learning…to be honest? That’s what learning is. It’s about fundamental change. It’s about not going back. An example of transformative learning I think is the global citizen course that I taught, the significant learning that happened to students in that experience. I couldn’t plan for, I didn’t anticipate, it just happened. It opened up student lives and everything changed. Some extraordinary changes happened; for the students, it changed the world. In some instances the experience changed the trajectory of their lives, whether it was an area of study, a decision to travel, or as simple as deciding not to watch TV, that sort of thing. After returning from Costa Rica with the first group I took, some students were emotionally traumatized . . . shaken. It took a few weeks . . . for several students it has affected their behaviour long term, of course affecting their world view.  I’m not exaggerating when I say traumatized, there were some kids who were . . . it raises a question of ethics related to this type of learning and teaching. They were so troubled by how they saw themselves now, and so shaken by seeing their society in a way they never had before; they found it very difficult. There were one or two students that took a long time to readjust.

DC – How did you address that upon your return?

LK – We debriefed over a course of several months. We’d get together as a group and talked about what happened and why it happened. The students would write about it a lot in their journals. We had folks come in from Canada World Youth, to talk and to listen. We anticipated this in the eight months leading up to our travel. Before we left we encouraged students to think about what they were getting themselves into. As much as we tried to anticipate and warn, and try to prepare, we couldn’t really fully prepare for a life-altering experiences such as this where you are living in an entirely different culture, alone with a family where you don’t understand their language, your diet is different, the whole community is different, (although, when it comes down to family, family is the same).
(TV is the same around the world. Whether you’re watching TV in Canada or in Costa Rica, it’s the same programs that you’re watching. There is that sort of universality.)

This is my grandmother story: the experience of a 17 year old student, the first year I took the group. The first 2 days in Costa Rica we spent at an orientation camp and it was very nice. The second day, late in the afternoon, we got onto a mini-bus and traveled up into the mountains to our community. It was getting dark, and you could feel the tension building, because the students knew that when we got to the community, small community, they would meet their house parents and go off into the dark alone with their new “parents”. You could feel the tension. When we got to the community it was nightfall. We got out of the bus. Across the field was the school, and the school was brightly lit, filled with Costa Rican parents and families. So we’re sort of huddled together as a group going into this school, and we’re standing and sitting along one wall, and it feels like the Costa Ricans are on the other side, and there’s this tension.

The community put on a wonderful program for us, and then the students met and were introduced to their house parents, one at a time. What happened was that individual students were called up one at a time, to meet their house parents, the people they’d be living with, on stage. The third student up was just really nervous, and he went up, and you can just feel the tension in the room. There’s an elderly woman standing on the side of the stage, and she just happened to be his house parent. She came up on the stage. She ran across the stage, and threw herself at him and gave him the biggest, warmest hug.

The whole room erupted in laughter and the tension evaporated. There was something universal that was communicated in that gesture (and we all got it), and I think at that point we ceased to being Canadians and Costa Rican, young and old, and we were all part of the same community. The idea of “the other”, in that case, evaporated. Therein lay the discovery that at the core we all are the same, we are all human. We all learned something important that day. Too often we magnify differences, and we use language that magnifies the differences, and it supports the fear based on the differences. Sorry, what were we talking about . . . ?

DC –Transformative learning.

LK –I think we know when we experience it; and this was one example. When I go back in my own life and I look at some of the transitions I made in my own life, and I see those times when I learned something really transformative; I changed. To teach for transformative learning is very difficult to do when you’re grading students for specific course objectives. Now that doesn’t say that transformative learning can’t happen in a classroom, but it’s much more difficult. I think that some of the things that we seek to understand….I’m not sure that you can write about them. Many of the things that we experience are not supported through articulation, even less through being written about.

 For further information about current events and this year's summer institutes at Global College, go to http://globalcollege.uwinnipeg.ca/