On Thursday 4 Feb, at our seasonal CCGL Leadership dinner, the Fellows met to listen to Dr. Christine Mahoney, a professor at the Frank Batten School in the University of Virginia. Dr. Mahoney taught us about social entrepreneurship and provided various examples of successful companies that employ social entrepreneurship. We learned about nonprofits and for-profits, and how the two types of organizations often act similarly to help the community around them. In addition, at the end of the presentation Dr. Mahoney gave us several valuable business models for establishing nonprofits. While learning about these important business models, we were also inspired by Dr. Mahoney to find our calling and commit to it, whatever it may be. Her talk left lasting impressions on us to generously serve our community as social entrepreneurs through developing successful nonprofit organizations and fundraising.  Thanks to Dr. Mahoney’s inspirational talk, we will carry these lessons with us as we grow and begin to assess our career options.

~ Jimmy Peccie ’18

Last week, we went further in depth on a African issues looking specifically at Nigeria. We read an article from Foreign Affairs entitled “Reforming Nigeria” which examined the growth of Nigeria’s government and economy. The major topics we discussed were the roles of women in Nigerian politics along with Nigeria’s plan for diversifying their economy in the future. The topic of oil again re-entered the conversation as oil prices continue to drop and countries reliant on the commodity continue to suffer. We concluded that Nigeria still has a long way to go, but it is on the right path to continue its growth and sustain its economy despite the current turbulence of oil prices.

~Arman Shekarriz ’19

February 1st, 2016: Today, another exciting admissions process began for the IRFs and CCGL as a whole. Chase Yager ’18 organized the presentation for the IRFs. He spoke to the current 8th graders about how awesome the International Relations Fellows program is and how they should all apply. He also called upon Jessica Williams ’16 who talked about her experience as a Fellow, Jaden Baum ’17 discussed about the symposium process, Jimmy Peccie ’18 shared his experiences with international travel, and Daniel Moscoso ’19 concluded with the day-in- the-life of a Fellow.  They all did a fantastic great job and we couldn’t be prouder of them and their student led presentation. Best of luck to the 8th graders in their applications!

In our meeting last Friday, the ’19s began discussing articles from the Economist involving current news about Africa. One was about the tension between Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt, concerning the use and misuse of hydroelectric power generated by the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Another was about the decrease in both the supply and demand of diamonds in Botswana, forcing the democratic country to find other ways to “spark” the economy. Eventually, the discussion flipped to the topic of the United States’ nuclear deal with Iran, which had placed sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program and international trade. This is where it got heated. We disputed over why the Iranians sent their uranium to the Russians of all people, which caused us to question Russia’s intent in the Middle East. By backing the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and being friendly to Iran, Russia may have successfully gained more influence in Middle Eastern than the U.S. This observation caused us to think deeply about U.S. foreign policy, which brought us to the Syrian Refugee Crisis. By this point, we were all acting like true politicians. We questions whether or not the United States should value American lives more than those from foreign countries or how, if at all, we should allow Syrians fleeing their country into the United States. At the moment, these questions are still up for debate, but we’ll save them for another time.

~Alexander Burkett