Educational Network for Global and Grassroots Exchange (ENGAGE)

Harnessing the Study Abroad Experience to Create Lasting Change

The Educational Network for Global and Grassroots Exchange (ENGAGE), a grant recipient of the New Initiatives Fund of RSF Social Finance, is an innovative San Francisco-based non-profit that organizes returned study abroad students to turn their education abroad into grassroots action in the United States. ENGAGE builds the next generation of global citizens by translating the study abroad experience into lifelong connections and cooperative action between peoples and social movements working towards a just and sustainable world.

There are over three hundred returned study abroad students active with ENGAGE. One of them, Bennett Haynes, came in contact with the organization as a third-year college student studying abroad in Thailand. “Going on a study abroad program connected to ENGAGE was crucial because it gave me a way to connect what I learned abroad with my life at home,” says Bennett. “Now I not only have a deeper understanding of global injustices, but I also have a way to act based on what I’ve learned, to be actively involved in building a better world.”

Bennett’s actions illuminate how ENGAGE works. Upon returning to the U.S., he and his fellow students organized an ENGAGE tour that brought fair trade and organic rice farmers he met in Thailand to speak at universities across theU.S. As a result of the tour, the cafeteria at Bowdoin College, where Bennett is a rising senior, is now carrying fair trade rice from the farmers’ cooperatives he worked with while overseas.

Chris Westcott, managing director of ENGAGE, says: “Receiving support from RSF will help ENGAGE grow to work on a more global scale. ENGAGE is poised to redefi ne what is possible through study abroad by harnessing the energy of study abroad students to strengthen the international grassroots movement.”

For more information, please visit ENGAGE’s website or call 415.255.9355. To support innovative projects like ENGAGE, please donate to the New Initiatives Fund at RSF Social Finance.

(Photo courtesy ENGAGE) Bunsong Matkhao, a leader of organic farmers, has hosted study abroad students in his farm in Thailand for years. Recently, Bunsong traveled to the U.S. on a trip organized by ENGAGE study abroad students to build relationships with the Fair Trade movement in the U.S.

Friday, August 3rd, 2007