Our Story
Global PACT began in the summer of 2002 with eight Rutgers students who wanted to know if it was really possible to change the world.
Two Rutgers University professors and eight undergraduates joined 15 Mongolian students for an intensive cross-cultural and activism training session in Ulan Batar, Mongolia. We spent two weeks talking, discussing, debating and arguing in the dusty offices of Women for Social Progress, the first women's NGO in Mongolia. Through it all, we all built friendships, learned about activism, began to understand cross-cultural issues and grassroots democracy, and strengthened our commitment to engaging our own communities. Through our experience, we came to believe that everyone needs activism skills, and that anyone with these skills can make positive change.
As a result of this positive experience, the Mongolian and American team members decided to write a manual that would allow others to experience the same process they had created for themselves. Working together, they created a Mongolian and an English version of an activism training handbook to empower youth to organize effective community projects. This manual became the basis for the organization, Global PACT, which today trains students worldwide to be positive forces of change.
Since 2002, trainings have been conducted across Mongolia by the Mongolian students and by Rutgers students in and around Rutgers and in the Boston area. Since then Global PACT has also expanded around the world. As of winter 2008, we have conducted four international trainings in Zagreb, Croatia, 2004-2007, two in South Africa, 2006-2007, and one in Thailand, 2007. We also ran two regional conferences in the New Jersey tri-state area. We will be expanding to Cambodia and Brazil in the summer of 2008, launching our first semester-long programs in the spring of 2009, and our first program in Chile in the summer of 2009. Each experience has built upon the successes of the previous trainings, not least because each training is led by graduates of previous trainings. Through its projects, Global PACT has empowered hundreds of students to be active and effective agents of change in more than fifty countries.
