The birth of GLTP
August 11, 2023
ZeNn Urbi
I am so grateful to have visited Japan, a beautiful country, multiple times because of my involvement with the international youth exchange programs by the Cabinet Office of Japan. Ship for Southeast Asian and Youth Program (SSEAYP) and Ship for World Youth( SWY) certainly changed me as a person, how I view life, and how I involve myself in social causes.
It was September 2019 when a dinner with a good friend from SSEAYP stimulated the idea of collaboratively working on a leadership project together. I have the passion to expand SSEAYP and SWY outside the boundaries of a cruise ship, two programs that bring youth leaders on board MS Nippon Maru. During these programs, participants will visit different countries discussing social issues and providing solutions. It is an understatement to say that both programs change my life.
Global leadership training program (GLTP) was born from that dinner night. An opportunity to collaborate with MEXT Tobitate provided an avenue to train the next generation of global leaders, providing hands-on leadership training, with the intent to assist participants in changing the world, one small step at a time.
The pilot program implemented at the beginning of the pandemic. If there is one great thing COVID-19 brought to my life, it is allowing GLTP be birthed online. Allowing young leaders from different corners of the world meet together, network and work towards improving the world.
From this pilot program, more batches came. Time passed, and as of early 2022, we have completed 5 batches of GLTP online. We also have conducted GLTP high school, three times. In May 2022, we implemented our first face to face GLTP summit in Tokyo. It was a great opportunity to provide hands-on leadership training in an offline capacity. And I must say, the summit was a success!
Where to from here? We are continuing with our GLTP online, Project design and implementation course, and hope to carry out more GLTP summits in the future. We aim to train more batches and grow this amazing community. We aim to collaborate with more agencies, whether public or private, in or outside Japan. We aim to attract funding to establish GLTP admin team, which is essential for this program to expand.
But aside from the growth, we hope to see the fruits from our alumni. We hope that alumni use GLTP community and their training to advance their selves, and their social causes to improve their community.
GLTP is all about equipping leaders towards a better future. Hope you consider joining us in this journey.