By: Rebecca
Rebecca participated in Allowance for Good's 2014 Global Philanthropy Summit program.

We all came into GPS with different expectations of what the experience would be like and different ideas about what philanthropy means to us. On the first day of the summit we were able to bring those different perspectives together to better understand philanthropy through a broader lens.

After discussing these topics as a whole, our first major activity involve making a video in small groups about what philanthropy means to us and how we engage in philanthropy. The videos ranged from slam poems to skits, all discussing the various definitions and aspects of philanthropy.

Later on we learned about GlobeMed from Alyssa Smaldino. GlobeMed is an organization that runs through universities across the country. Each college forms a partnership with their chapter and a community health organization, supporting them through training, research, fundraising, and volunteering. The Northwestern chapter is paired with one of our global affiliates, Adonai child development centre. Learning about GlobeMed was interesting to me because I became aware of how my involvement with programs like AFG could continue through college.

Another activity we participated in was creating our own business plans for social enterprises or nonprofits in small groups. This project allowed us to choose social issue that we cared about and think about ways that we could either solve those problems at the source or provide funding to solve them. Ideas included Cows for Care, a restaurant chain that used its proceeds to provide livestock to impoverished communities as a source of food and income, and Dogs for Jobs, a hotdog cart chain that gave jobs to at-risk people (Like felony franks).

These activities were a great introduction to the king of things that we would be doing and learning about for the remainder of the summit, they also allowed us to create our own definition of philanthropy based off of our own talents and experiences.