GLOBAL
VOICES
INITIATIVE

Fostering peace

one student at a time

The Global Voices Initiative is a program that links U.S. students with their peers worldwide. It uses the power of the arts and language to promote cross-cultural understanding and good will between American students and their counterparts abroad. The goal is to have a shared cultural experience, demonstrating that students have much more in common than they have differences, fostering peace, one student at a time.

Global Voices was created by Arlene Crewdson in Chicago in 2002 with support from the U.S. Department of State (for innovative educational programming) and a grant from the Chicago Public Schools. It was an outgrowth of Pegasus Players, an innovative not-for-profit theatre founded by Arlene in 1979. Pegasus was particularly known for its outreach to young people through its Young Playwrights Competition, and for providing the highest quality theatre and arts education at no cost to people who would otherwise have little or no access to it.

Global reach
Since our founding in 2002, we have reached more than 15,000 students in the U.S. and abroad. We have worked on five continents – North and South America, Africa, Europe and Asia – and in five languages: Arabic, English, French, Mandarin, Spanish, and English-as-a-Second Language. Our first partnership was with Beijing. Our current country partners are Antigua, China, Israel, Jordan, Morocco, Spain and Tanzania. In previous years we have partnered with Colombia, Egypt, England, Ireland, Italy, Lebanon, Mexico, Palestine and Taiwan.

Impact
A study by the University of Chicago’s Harris School for Public Policy showed that Global Voices students developed a greater sense of tolerance and saw fewer differences between themselves and their sister students. Teachers reported increased class participation and said that the program motivated students to learn the foreign language at a faster pace.

How Global Voices works

Testimonies

Lorin Pritikin, French Teacher, Francis W. Parker School, Chicago
“Global Voices is about bridging the world of young people, who all want the same things in life. It’s about making the world a smaller, not larger, place. It’s about hope for the future.”

Bob Keith, U.S. State Department

"The best way to bridge our differences is people-to-people. That's the beauty of Global Voices: using the arts to connect young people throughout the world – not in a political way or through policy decisions, but through simple human contact."

Arlene Crewdson, Global Voices Initiative Director
“I saw first-hand the impact of the arts on young people’s attitudes and understanding of people unlike themselves – and I wanted to extend that power beyond Chicago. Young people today are coming of age in a global community where geographic boundaries have been made insignificant by technology. I knew that learning to speak with their neighbors in their own language and about common issues was critical to fostering understanding across borders and cultures.”

Susan Bass Noel, Bass Family Foundation
“It is exhilarating to witness these partnerships through which students find they have much more in common than they have differences.”

Student in Arabic, Lindblom Math and Science Academy, Chicago
“I learned that we are different nationalities but we have a lot in common. That kind of knowledge is power.”

Student in Casablanca, Morocco

“Before Global Voices the only way we had to learn about Americans was from the movies and the internet. Now we have a way to learn firsthand what American students are really like.”

Student in Amman, Jordan

“Global Voices is important because it changes what we think of each other.”

Thank you