Live Stream of the White House Travel Bloggers Summit on Study Abroad and Global Citizenship, December 9, 2014 #WHTravelBloggers

This morning I learned via Twitter that the White House in collaboration with Hostelling International USA is hosting the first White House Travel Bloggers Summit on Study Abroad and Global Citizenship today.  You can learn more about the Summit via the HI-USA News webpage at http://bit.ly/1w9mQ9x and this blog post by HI-USA CEO Russ Hedge at http://bit.ly/1s92a1S.  As the title of the Summit suggests, invited participants are the top 100 travel bloggers and digital influencers.

Based on my limited available time to fully research this event it seems that the National Security Council may have played a significant role in planning the event.  The Summit will stream live via the White House Live Events page at http://1.usa.gov/1w9sOHo at 2:15pm EST.

Speakers include:

Penny Pritzker, Secretary of Commerce, Department of Commerce

Denis McDonough, Chief of Staff, The White House

Benjamin Rhodes, Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting, National Security Council

Evan Ryan, Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), Department of State

Carrie Hessler-Radelet, Director, Peace Corps

Daniela Kaisth, Vice President, External Affairs and IIE Initiatives, Institute of International Education

Alex Montoya, Alumnus, Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship Program

Angel Cabrera, President, George Mason University

Samantha Brown, Host, Travel Channel

Don Wildman, Host, Travel Channel

Robert Reid, Digital Nomad, National Geographic

Robin Goldberg, Chief Experience Officer, Minerva Project

James Howard, National iHeartRadio Brand Coordinator, iHeartMedia

If you wish to follow along via Twitter, Instagram or Facebook you can do so via #WHTravelBloggers.

#WHtravelbloggers Tweets

I'll be posting this in a few moments over on SECUSS-L for two reasons:  

First - to inform everyone about this event as it seems to have not have made it to the larger study abroad community.  Kudos to @CIEEstudyabroad for engaging via Twitter to see if any of their alumni, and possible travel bloggers, are attending the Summit!

Second - to possibly generate some discussion within the SECUSS-L community about the Summit.

While I haven't come across the complete list of 100 travel bloggers attending the Summit I posit that very few (if any) are Study Abroad professionals and aside from Evan Ryan of ECA and Daniela Kaisth of IIE it appears that the international educator voice is missing from such an important Summit on Study Abroad and Global Citizenship hosted by the White House!  Perhaps that is a good thing?  Your thoughts?

Vote for Your World Next Door in the Pepsi Refresh Project

As I was cleaning out my various inboxes of messages that accumulated during my vacation and other “out of office” time I came across a very interesting post on SECUSS-L (from Sept. 1^st) and I thought I would post to IHEC Blog about it.  My post is a simple copy and paste job of the original SECUSS-L message (with permission):

Do you believe in the power of study abroad? Like the idea of students experiencing study abroad in high school, and then creating a natural pipeline to longer term study abroad experiences at the college level?  Think it’s important that more minority students have access, and the opportunity, to study abroad?  Want more high school students coming in to higher education poised to approach college with a maturity born out of a study abroad experience?  Think students need to learn through experiences, and take command over foreign languages?

Then read on...

A Washington, DC teacher at Paul Public Charter School has created an innovative study abroad prep program for middle school students and is seeking your vote through the Pepsi Refresh Project.  Chris Magnuson started Your World Next Door in 2009 with a grant from the Humanities Council of Washington and a dream to inspire middle school students to set their sights on studying abroad.  He started with a small group of students interested in international travel and conducted five “Saturday Abroad" programs in which students visited local international communities to understand what it would feel like to spend a day in India, Ethiopia, Japan, Brazil or Italy.  Students caught the travel bug and became serious about studying abroad in high school. Through our activities they began to learn the steps necessary to truly be ready for going abroad and how such an adventure could enable them to be better prepared to enter college.  We are poised to follow our current middle school students through the steps to actually study abroad *but we need your help*!

If we win the Pepsi Refresh Project for the month of September, we will expand our program to more schools, offer language and culture classes for specific countries, create an intense cultural immersion summer program and offer financial assistance for students ready to study abroad this year.  *But we can only accomplish all of this with your vote!*

*Here is what we are asking you to do:*
1) *Vote today and everyday for the month of September!*  You can do so in two ways:  Visit http://Pep.si/9fqurK to go directly to our voting page and vote online or you can use your cell phone and text 102524 to Pepsi (73774)!

2) Recruit 5 friends to vote everyday for the month of September.  We need a HUGE group of people willing to commit to voting on a DAILY basis for the month of September.

3) Learn more about our mission, learn more about the programs offered over the  past year, and see videos of our students in action so you can spread the word about what we do.  Visit our website at http://www.yourworldnextdoor.org and check out our facebook page:

If you have any questions, ideas for promoting this project, or comments please feel free to contact Chris Magnuson at cromagnuson@yahoo.com or Beth Mora, Program Assistant, at ywnd.beth@gmail.com.

UC San Diego Extension Researches Global Volunteer Service

My recent research efforts lead me to an interesting summary of a survey conducted by the University of California San Diego Extension on global volunteer service. I have not read the full report (as I can’t find it available in PDF format online) so I am simply copying and pasting below the most interesting findings from the UC San Diego Extension press releases that I found.

“Two-thirds of high school students and about half of the college students surveyed say they have participated in discussions in the past year related to traveling to other regions to provide volunteer service, whereas less than half of the adult population, and only one-quarter of retirees, say they have done so.”

“About 40 percent of Americans say they're willing to spend several weeks on vacations that involve volunteer service, with another 13 percent desiring to spend an entire year.”

“Overall, the survey found that over two-thirds (69 percent) of Americans have participated in donating money or time to a global cause, up from the 48 percent in a spring 2008 poll conducted by UC San Diego Extension.”

“While 26 percent of Generation Y want to hop on a plane and help out in Africa or Europe, about 36 percent of retirees and baby boomers would choose staying in North America for their volunteer vacations.”

The overall top ten international desired destinations for volunteering are:

1. Africa (17%)

2. East Asia (12%)

3. South America (9%)

4.(tie) Mexico (8%)

4.(tie) Western Europe (8%)

6. Eastern Europe (7%)

7. Central America (6%)

8. Pacific islands (5%)

9. Australia (4%)

10. Middle East (3%)

You can access the UC San Diego Extension press releases and other articles relating to this research here.

The Council on Standards for International Educational Travel (CSIET)

In case IHEC Blog readers are not up on the numerous youth exchange activities in our field I thought I would briefly highlight the work of The Council on Standards for International Educational Travel (CSIET). I first became aware of the work of CSIET when I was contracted by the Forum on Education Abroad to create their Standards Toolbox (which is a companion to their Standards of Good Practice for Education Abroad) as they have produced some great resources related to standards of good practice for the field. I find that CSIET produces excellent resources that can be very informative for colleagues working in higher education.

It’s been some time since I’ve been on the CSIET website and it now has a new and better look and feel. I found two new items on the CSIET website that I thought IHEC Blog readers might find of interest.

First, those of you who like data (and who doesn’t?) might find their Youth Exchange Statistics to be of interest. You can access the data here.

Second, CSIET has launched a joint public service campaign entitled "Host Exchange Students" with the United States Department of State. You can link to this new initiative here.

Educational travel for youth (pre-collegiate level) is becoming more of an interest for me as I was 16 and 18 when I was an exchange student in Rosenheim, Germany so I plan to post more in this area of the field. It was these experiences during my teenage years that lead me on my career path in international education.