What is a Global Citizen?

What does it mean to be a global citizen? A global citizen by defintion is someone who identifies themselves as being apart of an emerging world community and their actions contribute to building the values and practices of this community. Throughout the first couple of weeks in our service based learning class we have learned what it means to be an effective global citizen. We have read several different articles that voice their opinion on what it means to be a global citizen, whether or not they believe it’s beneficial. After reviewing these articles, I feel as if my formulation of what it means to be a global citizen has changed. Originally I believed that any type of service in another country was beneficial for them because it was providing a “helping hand.” But I am now more understanding of the meaning of a global citizen and I am more cognizant of the difficulty surrounding what it means. Similarly to Ivan Illich’s article “To Hell with Good Intentions,” we can’t just throw ourselves in a different community and expect to make a change. Also making a change within a community takes time, which I had not thought about previously. This article in particular has changed my views on how I can be an effective global citizen. To be a successful global citizen we need to be aware of the community we are entering so we can prepare ourselves with the situations that may be taking place. Communities throughout the world might be experiencing different things; providing a helping hand after a traumatic event such as hurricane Sandy that took place in Haiti (2012). The people of Haiti may or may not appreciate our help. But I feel as if this is something that we have to be aware of and that not every service mission will have positive results. Just like the service trip we are about to embark on in Peru, it’s important for us to understand the community we are entering in order to create the best results possible. We can no longer throw ourselves out there to attempt to make a change, we might only be making things worse. My new understanding of what it means to be a global citizen makes me excited for our service learning trip next week in Peru. I now have a better appreciation of what it means to be an effective global citizen and how I can use my hands to help.