Today and tomorrow, at the Global Changes Initiative International Global Issues Network (GIN) Conference is at the Chamber of Commerce in Kirchberg, 250 students and their teachers from over 15 different countries present their ideas for “Facilitating Sustainable Change through Education and Integration”.

The Global Issues Network aims to put students in a position where they can develop and realise aid projects by equipping them with the tools that allow them to bring about positive change underpinned by the idea that you don’t need to be an adult, politician or other kind of person with power in order to affect change. 

500 GIN projects have already been implemented since it was founded ten years ago at the International School in Luxembourg. Since then, it has grown into an international network with 100,000 members from 1,000 schools across five continents.

Guest of honour and coordinator of the Mateneen initiative Martine Neyen opened the conference on Thursday with a presentation on the unique project financed by the Oeuvre Nationale de Secours Grande Duchesse Charlotte, aimed at facilitating the integration of the many refugees arrived in Luxembourg in the last few years.

Other speakers included Andy Cunningham, from the Aga Khan Foundation in Geneva, Isabel Falkenberg, CEO of the Walkabout Foundation, Marie Christine Nigagwire, who survived the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, and Rob and Paul Forkan, who lost their parents in the Sri Lanka Tsunami in 2004 and set up a company that donates 10% of its profits towards helping orphans in that region.

Also speaking was Sophia Jansen, ten years of age and the founder of the Garden Concerts for the Mobile Mini Circus for Children in Kabul.