As we say hello to Fall, it’s a great time to reflect on the #YouthEmpowerment of IYLEP, which we hosted virtually this summer for Arabic speaking high school students, with partners World Learning and funded through the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The program focused on leadership development and identity building.

May 2021 brought the first anniversary of the killing of George Floyd, which has begun to transform the way issues of systemic racism are seen in this country. The road to address structural injustices in the USA is very long and winding, but this work is essential in order to build a brighter future for all people residing here now, and for all future generations. It is our hope that our work to connect people, across difference, can play a tiny, yet constructive, role in this transformation.

Wow! So many reflections on what it means to be a citizen diplomat in Kalamazoo, over our first 50 years, in this great piece by Second Wave Media. Thank you Leeanne Seaver, Betty Lee Ongley, Tom Kostrzewa and Jerry Potratz for sharing your stories. Also, so excited to hand off our Taste of the World event to Merze Tate Explorers and WoteSawa (more on that below). You will find all of this and more in this great article as we move toward our new name and our next 50 years!! Thanks Mark Wedel for this in depth piece.

As we bid farewell to women’s history month, we reflect on a hard month behind us. The anniversary of the pandemic declaration, the opening of the trial and the wounds of the killing of George Floyd, the continuing rise of Asian hate in this country, with a horrible shooting spree targeting Asian American women in Atlanta, and so much more to be concerned about in our world. At the end of this update, you will find a note about the current situation in Myanmar, which especially impacts the local Burmese community, and concerns all of us in West Michigan.

Last year on this day, we were looking forward to one extra day of February. And we were days away from the pandemic declaration. This year, as we enter March 2021, we are one year into this most unusual time. February 2021 saw the first Presidential visit to Kalamazoo of the Biden Administration, and for us, has included welcoming visitors from 29 countries (virtually); engaging exchanges with staff from Kalamazoo Regional Educational Service Agency (KRESA) and Kalamazoo Valley Community College (KVCC), as well as an inspiring dialogue between young European leaders and grassroots changemakers from Uplift Kalamazoo.

In this moment of tremendous upheaval in the United States of America, we, Colleagues International, would like to echo an element of the statement we released upon the killing of George Floyd this past May. This deeply divided country, with a very particular history, has a tremendous amount of work to do

Last Thursday, December 17th, we hosted a zoom reunion of Women Entrepreneurs from Russia, who came to Kalamazoo through Open World in early March of this year. While we had 3 groups with us that week of the pandemic declaration, theirs was the last to leave, on Friday, March 13th.

On November 13th my phone did what many of our phones do – it showed off its ‘artificial intelligence’, sharing photos from ‘on this day’ in prior years. It started with a photo from two years ago. Laurence Bézy, a Program Officer at our Washington DC-based partner World Learning had come to Kalamazoo on a professional exchange.