Fundraiser to benefit eight youths traveling to India in July as part of leadership program
Sarah Hoffman missed three weeks of classes during her senior year at the Bosque School in Albuquerque to participate in the Sustainable Global Leadership Alliance’s program in India last year.
She went to a leper colony and observed the unique social structure inside the community. Her hair got braided over and over again during a visit to an orphanage. One of the highlights of the trip was coming into contact with Buddhist monks from Tibet who make their home in Dharamsala.
“It was an incredible experience,” she said by phone from New York. “I loved it. I want to go back forever.”
Seventeen youths in their late teens and early 20s are looking forward to their adventure in India when a new group of students at the Sustainable Global Leadership Alliance travels to the Indian subcontinent in July. To help defray the cost of the three-week, service-based trip and the program’s five weekend training sessions, eight of the participants from Santa Fe are holding a fundraising event at the Santa Fe Brewing Company on June 19.
Among the evening’s entertainers are blues singer Madi Sato and Wagogo, a fourmember, Albuquerque-based band that weaves northern New Mexico folk songs with African and Spanish sounds. Wagogo’s tunes are written in Spanish, English and the Shona language of Zimbabwe. The band has released five CDs, including the album “Love Music” in 2007.
“We’ll also have a silent auction of local arts and crafts,” said the alliance’s founder and executive director Myra Murphy-Jacob. “There will be everything from gift certificates from local businesses to pottery from Jemez Pueblo.”
The cost for each student to attend the eight-week program is $4,300. Murphy-Jacob says many of the students have only been able to raise $2,000 so far. Fundraising events are an important way to help supplement the difference.
“Most of our students are from New Mexico,” said Murphy-Jacob. “Of the 17 students in the current program, only two are from outof-state.”
Founded in 2004 in Albuquerque, Sustainable Global Leadership Alliance is a leadership program designed to help young adults become an effective catalyst for global change by offering leadership training workshops and developing community sustainability projects with the participants.
Workshops leaders include specialists in nutrition and food, nonviolent communication facilitators, professors of economics and history as well as businessmen. They facilitate sessions that explore the individual’s impact on the world, complex social systems and Marshall Rosenberg’s nonviolent method of communication, which helps people learn how to exchange information necessary to resolve conflicts and differences peacefully.
“I got a better sense of selfconfidence from participating in the program,” said Hoffman, who is a student at The Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. “One of the things I learned is how to be a global citizen. I feel more committed to be a citizen of the world.”
If you go
WHAT: Fundraiser for students in the Sustainable Global Leadership Alliance with the band Wagogo, blues singer Madi Sato and other special guests
WHEN: 7 p.m. - 10 p.m., Thursday
WHERE: Santa Fe Brewing Company, 37 Fire Place
HOW MUCH: Suggested donation $10-$20. To learn more about Sustainable Global Leadership Alliance, call (505) 286-6148 or visit the Web site www.sgla.org
