NEW YORK, Sept. 28, 2015 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ — This Commitment to Action, announced at the 2015 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting, is a partnership between the Abundance Foundation and Project Zero, a research center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
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This CGI commitment expands global access to Out of Eden Learn (OOEL), a free, open, online learning community allowing students from around the world to accompany journalist Paul Salopek’s Out of Eden Walk: a 21,000-mile, multi-year journey on foot to retrace the migratory pathways of our early human ancestors from Ethiopia to Tierra del Fuego, Chile.
This CGI commitment will allow the OOEL program to reach 70,000 new students, supported by at least 3,500 teachers in at least 50 countries by November 2017.
“Project Zero‘s learning community invites students to experience human connections by putting them in touch with young people growing up in different parts of the world. Students are invited to slow down, look carefully at the world, exchange stories with other young people, and reflect on how our individual lives connect to bigger human stories,” according to Paul Salopek.
The OOEL online platform offers young people the opportunity to expand global understanding, explore assumptions about their cultures and communities, look carefully at their worlds, and address the challenges of modernity and technology in their lives. Classrooms, after school programs, and individual students from around the world are clustered into small, diverse learning groups to experience a “learning journey” together. They complete weekly activities, post their responses, and read and respond to others’ posts.
A 10th grade student in Mumbai described her experience with OOEL.
“Though oceans and mountains may separate us, I have grown a strong bond with many of [the students]. Many of the things they wrote about have touched my heart and left me with a desire to know more. They have shown me the world through several different perspectives. I have learned the meaning of being a true global citizen.”
An educator in Shanghai, China described the impact of OOEL in the classroom:
“I like the new way of learning embodied by this project. In the past, students’ thinking is fairly restricted. But this activity gives them choice and is student-centered. They are slowing down to observe the world around them. They noticed things they haven’t before. I also like the assignments, especially how they take the students outside the classroom. Students are learning by doing and gaining their own personal experience. It’s a good supplement to their classroom learning… I also liked the posts of students from other countries, through which we see their attitudes towards life. It’s an interaction across the globe.”
Through this CGI commitment, Abundance Foundation and Project Zero will expand program content and deepen the reach of OOEL to new populations and geographies beyond the current 10,000 students in 41 countries. The commitment seeks to expand OOEL’s reach by increasing language access for non-English speakers, enabling a low-bandwidth option for engagement in resource-limited settings, creating an online discussion forum for participants, and developing public art installations to explore themes of the walk.
By investing at the intersection of Health, Empowerment, and Arts and Education, the Abundance Foundation is transforming community systems to support healthy individuals. To learn more, please visit the website at http://abundance.org
About the Clinton Global Initiative
Established in 2005 by President Bill Clinton, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), an initiative of the Clinton Foundation, convenes global leaders to create and implement solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. CGI Annual Meetings have brought together 190 sitting and former heads of state, more than 20 Nobel Prize laureates, and hundreds of leading CEOs, heads of foundations and NGOs, major philanthropists, and members of the media. To date, members of the CGI community have made more than 3,200 Commitments to Action, which have improved the lives of over 430 million people in more than 180 countries.
In addition to the annual meeting, CGI convenes CGI America, a meeting focused on collaborative solutions to economic recovery in the United States, and CGI University (CGI U), which brings together undergraduate and graduate students to address pressing challenges in their community or around the world. This year, CGI also convened CGI Middle East & Africa, which brought together leaders across sectors to take action on pressing social, economic, and environmental challenges.
For more information, visit clintonglobalinitiative.org and follow us on Twitter @ClintonGlobal and Facebook at facebook.com/clintonglobalinitiative.
Contact: Stephen Kahn, M.D.
Phone: 510-841-4145
Email: press@abundance.org
Web site: http://abundance.org
