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What does it mean to be a global citizen? A global citizen is someone who identifies with being part of an emerging world community and whose actions contribute to building this community's values and practices. Historically, human beings have always formed communities based on shared identity. I myself can consider myself a global citizen.
I have come to understand just how connected we are as a planet. We are actually very small when you compare Earth to the rest of space, so how can we not be similar? Throughout my attendance at the Tuesday Time Roundtables, traveling abroad, and my Global Learning courses, I learned that if there is one thing that connects us all, it's the want to help and be kind to people. I have seen this action come from Italians while I was abroad, in videos showed by my classes, in lectures and discussions. The human race is a community. Just being human, we are able to sympathize with another human being, regardless of where they came from or where they are going. We know what it's like to feel sad, happy, heartbroken, angry, jealous, anxious, and more. We can relate and so we feel this need to help each other and be there for one another. I have seen someone give up a seat to an elderly here in Miami, as I have seen it in Italy, in Puerto Rico, and in New York. I have seen people cry about the Syrian War here in Miami, I have seen how our economic recession in 2007-2009 caused it to spillover into Europe, I have seen how the clothes we wear in the U.S. were touched and made by someone in India or China, I have seen how water being drunk here in the U.S. comes from different parts of the world, I have seen how we Facetime and reply back to on Twitter to people form different parts of the world, I have seen how we buy and sell in other countries, how we do business with people from other countries, how our military works together with others from other countries, I have seen two people with the exact same dreams to become a doctor, but both in different parts of the world, I have seen and realized and come to understand just how connected we are as a community. The only thing that separates us is land.
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I personally feel that you cannot understand just how similar we really are without traveling and meeting new people. Meeting new people is key to understanding that we are all connected one way or another. We are emotional, conscious creatures. I realized this when I was traveling in Italy. I thought, "wow, this is going to be weird, I wont be able to speak to anyone because I don't know Italian, will they be nice? Do they hate Americans?" These thoughts ran through my head as I touched base in Italy. Shortly after, I realized just how kind people are. Italians, regardless of whether you speak their language or not, they will make the attempt to communicate with you even if it's just with their hand, they will be eager to show you their country, their food, their people, their monuments, and much more. They are so proud of where they come from and so proud to show us, tourists just how great they are. I knew that we needed to find good places to eat in Italy and who knows best what is good to eat in Italy than the Italians themselves? So, we would ask for their opinion, where they thought we should go eat. We took the suggestion into consideration and decided that an Italian will always know more than us, American tourists, in a place like Italy about food. Therefore, everywhere we ate was not without first the suggestion of a true Italian.
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Post-graduation, I would like to attend graduate school. I would then like to begin working as an attorney and travel the world. My goal when it comes to traveling the world is to be able to learn about women and financially support women from around the globe. I would like to travel to each continent and choose one woman I'd like to support so that she may receive an education and become someone in life, whatever she wants to be. One of my biggest passions is women empowerment. I am all for it. I believe that if women make up half of the population, then we must make sure as a community that women all around the globe are given an opportunity to excel. In many countries, poor families do not have enough money to provide schooling for all of their children, so they usually choose the boys. I would like to see if there is a way in which I can support the young girls in poor families to attend school, so that they too have a chance at a future.
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Thanks to the Global Learning program at Florida International University, one skill I can say I have gained is to always listen, to listen before you respond. This is a skill I gained because throughout my journey I have dealt with a lot of views that are not similar to mines and a lot of opinions that are not similar to mines. I have learned that instead of listening to respond, I must listen to understand, to understand why that person may think like that and their cultural background.
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