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Global Dignity Day

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In a day and age when most do not agree on anything, from east and west, to conservative and liberal politics, to issues of race and geography, and amongst differing religions and faiths, I believe, along with the founders of Global Dignity, that dignity is the one thing that everyone in the world wants equally. Dignity can be the unifying force that brings us all together at a time when the world needs this more than ever.

On Monday, October 20th 2008, I, in concert with the co-founders of Global Dignity (www.globaldignity.org), His Royal Highness Crown Prince Haakon of Norway, Professor Pekka Himanen and John Hope Bryant, and several other Young Global Leaders (as associated with the World Economic Forum) conducted our first ever GLOBAL DIGNITY DAY 2008 in 30 countries, inclusive of every continent.

In this blog, I am sharing an update on Global Dignity Day in Canada. I have taken part in other Dignity Day events including one in Vancouver and another in Jordan that involved Her Majesty Queen Rania in Jordan. I am pleased to report back on Global Dignity Day in Toronto, Canada on October 20th, 2008! We reached 40 grade 9 students (14 years old) in a Leadership Course at Greenwood College (http://www.greenwoodcollege.com/)

I had about an hour to deliver the course for each of the two classes. We kicked off with having the students write what Dignity means to them on a sheet of paper that I handed out, and then it led into a group discussion and a brief presentation on the Dignity Principles. I found that most of the initial definitions people wrote down on defining dignity related to self-respect. My co-facilitator was a grade 11 student (Celine Caira) from the school who helped me to prepare for the event. Celine shared a story about what dignity means to her based on a recent encounter with a 14 year old girl that she met in a recent trip to India with her family. I shared a few personal stories and gave context on the work of TakingITGlobal.org and how we are growing a global community of youth making a difference. I connected the mandate of our website to the dignity principles. In helping the students further understand the meaning of dignity, I asked them to share their own examples of increasing or even decreasing the dignity of others. They were able to generate many strong examples of what dignity is NOT - which actually transformed the energy in the room to be more supportive (for example after talking about the negative impact of making fun of someone for who they are).

As a process note, it was very helpful to have the students read each of the dignity principles out loud and talk about what that particular principle means to them. There were certain words that they did not understand - such as interdependent - so I took time to explain the meaning behind the word.

The bulk of the interactive time was when I had the students break out into groups of 4-5 and develop their own ABC’s of Dignity. They had about 6-7 minutes and I was amazed to see how our their depth of understanding about dignity had significantly increased since I first entered the class. At first, in doing the ABCs, we started out as a full class discussion, but I quickly realized that it would be better to have them work in teams - and this was a very smart decision. Each of the group then had a representative read out their ABCs of Dignity to the class and they were all eager to hear about the different impressions and interpretations.

At the end of the class, I unveiled the ‘Dignity Flag’ which I prepared (a huge canvas with bright colours) with Celine and Caitlin (another student) prior to Dignity Day. The Flag stated ‘We Pledge to DIGNITY’ and the students were invited to put their name on the flag, along with a word that relates to dignity starting with the first letter of their name (i.e. Jennifer - Justice). They were eager to make their pledge and I noted that many of the words were difficult for the students to spell (which could lead to future vocabulary activities in their studies). The Dignity Flag is now being hung in the school and I am hoping that at the next school wide assembly, it will be shared by some student representatives with the entire school!

Thanks for the opportunity to work together!

Special appreciation goes out to Kim Samuel-Johnson who is part of the World Economic Forum community and was a former Global Leader for Tomorrow. Kim helped bridge the connection with Greenwood College and hosted the Dignity Day planning meetings. I would also like to thank Caitlin Samuel-Johnson and Celine Caira, who are the Grade 11 students that helped me in preparing for Dignity Day. Here is our team photo taken at one of our planning sessions! Also, closing reflection from Celine, “Seeing the way Greenwood students responded to Dignity Day gives me hope that one day we will live peacefully with global dignity”.


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