-Queens Borough President and GABPC to host students at community networking event in March
Guyana benefits from a new master’s degree programme that uses the world and the communities of Guyana as its campus. On March 12 from 5:00-8:30pm, Queens Borough President Helen M. Marshall, in collaboration with the Guyanese and American Business and Professionals Council (GABPC) and the Future Generations Graduate School, will host a public networking event in Queens to support this new educational opportunity involving several Guyanese community development leader-practitioners. Seven Guyanese students will share their experiences in the programme, including highlights of their recent studies in India.
The Future Generations Graduate School has admitted seven Guyanese community development professionals into its accredited Master’s Degree Programme in Applied Community Change and Conservation. The Guyanese cohort joins a global class of 20 students from 10 countries that will visit India, the United States, Peru and Nepal as part of their two-year course of study. Students bring these experiences back to Guyana, where they continue their online coursework and complete a hands-on research practicum to benefit their communities.
The Guyanese students – four women and three men – are involved in health care, conflict resolution, environmental conservation, cultural preservation, food security and economic development in five of Guyana’s ten regions and were selected following a competitive application process.  The professional degree programme aims to strengthen community development leaders while allowing them to keep their current jobs and continue their work in communities.  It represents a new type of global higher education, an integrated approach that emphasizes applied learning within communities with the world as its campus.
Future Generations faculty member and former Carter Center official Jason Calder, who is responsible for the Guyana focus, says, “This programme is particularly suited for Guyana given the country’s high out-migration rates.  It emphasizes community-based learning, allowing students to stay in their home countries for 20 months of the 24-month programme, while linking them to a global faculty and peer group and taking them to learn first-hand from outstanding examples of social change and conservation around the world.”
Students pursue their coursework online and face-to-face each term through one-month field residential.  Courses in health, sustainable development, management and governance, conflict transformation, and nature conservation build practical skills and deepen knowledge. Students apply this breadth of knowledge to a specific area of interest through an applied research project that serves their community.
Students are currently in India taking part in the Term I residential, which begins with a focus on social change at Gandhi’s study center in Sevagram and includes an immersion in issues of community health at the world renowned Jamkhed Comprehensive Rural Health Project. The students will stay in New York for several days upon their return from India next month.The students will be hosted at a networking/reception event open to the public on March 12 from 5:00-8:30pm at Queens Borough Hall, 120-55 Queens Boulevard in Kew Gardens, NY. “As part of our efforts to promote links between U.S. organizations and Guyana, we are partnering with the Future Generations Graduate School to support the Guyana Community Scholars Initiative and raise awareness and support for these Guyanese community leaders,” states GABPC Executive Director Shanie Persaud. “There are many ways that the overseas communities can link up with these students, and our goal is to help forge those partnerships.”
For more information on the event visit the GABPC and Future Generations websites at www.gabpc.org or www.futuregradschool.org, or contact Shanie Persaud at (718) 301-6272/347-612-6216/shaniep@gabpc.org