Join the San Diego Diplomacy Council and La Jolla Country Day School for our groundbreaking Virtual Summer Global Leaders Program for students aged 14-18 years old! This unique opportunity will enable participants in San Diego and around the world to engage with questions plaguing the world’s most critical thinkers. From nuclear proliferation to sustainability negotiations, our program has been curated with future leaders in mind.

Program Details:

• Open to students aged 14-18 from around the world
• Enjoy as a four-week package, or select weeks to suit your interests
• Sessions run Monday – Friday, 9.00 am – 11.30 am PDT
• 10.00 am  – 10.30 am will serve as a break, with optional cultural offerings

Learning Objectives: 
At the conclusion of each week’s programming, students will come away with:

• A nuanced understanding of a timely, global issue
• Information about career paths in the field of international affairs and diplomacy
• Increased cultural competency and understanding through strengthened leadership and civic engagement skills
• Connections with students and change-makers from San Diego and across the globe
• Exposure to the cultures of participating countries through small-group led discussion, cooking classes, sharing of hobbies and favorite music, and more
• A Certificate of Excellence in Global Citizenship on the topic of the week

These four one-week programs will be focused on global issues, leadership development, and diplomacy. Sessions will include dynamic international speakers, small group discussions, group projects, a diplomacy simulation, student-led sessions, and cultural offerings including cooking classes and musical performances.

These Are the Stakes: Peacemaking in a Nuclear World
Week 1 (July 6-10): In the controversial 1964 presidential election ad, a young girl counting daisy petals is engulfed in a mushroom cloud as President Johnson somberly warns us: “These are the stakes… We must either love each other, or we must die.” More than a half century later, the Cold War nuclear brinkmanship between the US and USSR is a topic of history books, but the dangers of weapons of mass destruction—and of mass distraction—remain an ever-present and all-too-real threat. In this session, students will examine peacemaking actions around the world and international efforts to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Bridge Over Troubled Water: Resource Sustainability
Week 2 (July 13-17): Approximately 780 million people worldwide do not have access to safe drinking water. Meanwhile, ninety percent of San Diego’s water is imported from Northern California and the Colorado River via an aqueduct over 200 miles long, a fact that exposes the tenuous connection to sustainability underlying the prosperous society of America’s Finest City. In this session, students will consider the critical challenges involved in ensuring access to water worldwide as well as the geopolitical consequences of water scarcity.

Going Viral: Pandemic Diplomacy
Week 3 (July 20-24): Until recently, many of us associated the word “pandemic” with science-fiction stories, popular movies, or a zombie apocalypse television show; the year 2020 has brought home to us all the true meaning of the costs, risks and challenges of a global epidemic. This session will focus on how engaged citizens around the world are responding to the new realities of COVID-19, along with examining how the international community has acted in the face of other global epidemics in the past century with a particular emphasis on the HIV-AIDS crisis from the 1980s to today.

Tempest-Tossed: Borders and Immigration
Week 4 (July 27-31): The devastation of the Second World War left seven to eleven million people searching for a new home; today there are over 70 million refugees or displaced people worldwide. Despite being signatories to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and its promise of freedom of movement, today’s economic powers nonetheless vacillate between open, semi-open, and closed borders in their approaches to immigration from developing nations. Meanwhile, San Diego lies a stone’s throw from the world’s second-busiest land-border crossing. In this session, students will reflect on the challenges and opportunities posed by ever-increasing global migration and the ways in which state, international, and non-governmental organizations respond.

For the program and more information, please email lulu@sandiegodiplomacy.org.

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