Four Friends and a Satellite Dish
In 1998, four college friends had an idea to connect young people across the globe to foster dialogue and forge meaningful connections. They had heard about the emergence of video conferencing technology and thought maybe they could use it to link classrooms.
Before long they were crossing borders wearing backpacks stuffed with satellite equipment. Their focus was on linking places where the culture gap was widest, where the need to break down stigmas was greatest, and where young people were least likely to be aware of each other’s perspectives.
They went to Rwanda and Sudan, Iraq and Syria – to listen to and amplify the voices of young people who’d witnessed genocide and war and who’d lost homes, parents, sisters and brothers.
On the other end of those early connections were American students who might have thought ‘that war is not in my country,’ or ‘that crisis doesn’t affect me.’ But now they’d met someone – a person, not a stereotype – who’d lived those experiences.
Suddenly, the students’ perspectives – on both ends of the conversation – shifted. They realized the world was much more complex and interconnected than they’d understood.
This was the genesis of Global Nomads Group.
