The room is bursting with gabble and laughter. The rumpus, from the perspective of a Finnish teacher educator, is almost unimaginable when the team of around twenty participants of the BeGlobal consortium from Chile, Colombia, France, and Finland are speed-dating, tossing balls, learning from Global Competence, Gamification pedagogy and Constructive Alignment, co-creating, painting, and getting to know each other.

To get everyone’s attention for the next part of the Training workshop for forming a Pedagogy Framework for Global Competence an improvised yelp is needed, and suddenly, I realize I am singing with a voice I didn’t know I had.

Strangely, this loud and vocal meeting becomes a space staying still, together, to pause and reflect on the dimensions and possibilities of Global Citizenship in a multicultural, international dialogue. The sprinkling enthusiasm, bubbling gaiety of the people in the consortium, the abundant delights provided by the coordinating partner, and the fruitful soil of sunny Chile are fiercely contrasted by the tangible concern we all share about the future of the planet; the well-being of future generations, challenges that we face in our contexts of life and livelihoods, and the recent developments in our societies regardless of their location on the globe. Educating Global Citizens is a serious and arduous task that we celebrate with pleasure and vigor.

Kicking of Global Competence for Global Citizens of the Future

Kick-off meeting of BeGlobal project took place in Talca, Chile, in the hospitality of Universidad Cátolica de Maule.

The School of Vocational Teacher education in Haaga-Helia (Finland) is leading work package that concentrates on capacity building program for boosting Global Citizenship and innovative Internationalization@home experiences by preparing the Pedagogy Framework on Global Competence using a co-creation method and innovative pedagogical pathways, designing the training content on Global Citizenship including social responsibility, global competence and civic engagement, and conducting training workshops on Global Citizenship for HEI staff, trainers, students and externals.

Haaga-Helia strongly participates alongside of our Ulysseus partner Université de Cote d’Azur (UniCa, France) to their leading work package that focuses on creating and facilitating “Global citizen internalization@home experiences” – a trio of serious Games for reflecting on local challenges.

The other partners Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios (UNIMINUTO) and Fundación Universitaria Juan N. Corpas from Colombia and Universidad Cátolica de la Santísima Concepción from Chile are leading the creation of local alliances, communications and dissemination and the coordination and quality assurance of BeGlobal. They will make sure that the target groups (HEI staff, students and NGOs from most vulnerable sectors) of the project will have the knowledge, skills and attitudes that will contribute to a long-term development of an active global citizenship and contribute to improving the social cohesion in this region. This way they will have capabilities to respond to the 21st century political, social, economic, and environmental challenges with a social and global responsibility approach.

This doesn’t feel like just another project Kick-off meeting. The group gives more than we ever imagined. A hybrid training session with the BeGlobal Haaga-Helia team joining us online. Puzzled faces when trying to figure out Finnish pedagogy approach, and confidence to speak about the local issues and about the uncertainties that a project like this evokes. Sharing the responsibilities of us as global citizens of the present and the future entail. We have voices in our hearts, and in our communities, that need to be heard and addressed. BeGlobal is one little step, an attempt to do so.

Echos of shared visions of a Global Community

While we work together during four intensive days, we start to become a community. We have started forming a shared sound. We echo: “BeGlobal be… brave, inspired, passionate, human, intergrate, connection, humble, respectful, belong, magical, BeGlobal Be You, tolerant, kind, social, excellent, empathy, curious, BeGlobal be loved”. The next physical meeting in Haaga-Helia in Helsinki in November will then carry the next steps of our joint future endeavors.

I have a voice. You have a voice. We have a voice. We are searching for a communal voice. The project is about finding a common voice, of rather a choir of diverse vocals, that reach audiences in the local communities in Chile and Colombia and hopefully has a global impact for the global citizens of the future, perhaps even with the students in Haaga-Helia’s vocational teacher and Special Needs Teacher Education.

What becomes obvious is that the power and commitment for transformation come with and from the community. The international community we have started to create will be the force that can carry out concrete steps to change. During the farewell meal the BeGlobal Project Coordinator team’s Project Manager Jorge Burgos from UCM (Universidad Cátolica de Maule, Chile) escorts us to our journey home with an adventitious vocal. We aspire to record the solemn melody into the interstices of the previous rhymes in our hearts. The lyrics are about the 12 voices and 12 cries of the midnight. The Kick-off meeting dissipates into a dispersing cluster of voices with wings as the consortium members return to their own realities.