A young leader from Kyrgyzstan helped set the strategic direction for a volunteer center in California last year. The Volunteer Center of Santa Cruz County [12]supports 22 programs that provide services to young people, families, seniors, working professionals, and people with disabilities as well as connecting them to meaningful service with over 400 non-profit partners. In the past five years, the volunteer center has grown exponentially, and, according to Associate Director Lois Connell, the organizational management wanted to take a look at their vision moving forward.
When Community Solutions [13] Leader Farida Sulaimanova came from Kyrgyzstan to join their organization in August 2011, Connell never imagined how integral Sulaimanova would become in shaping their vision. Over the following four months, Sulaimanova worked with senior management, volunteers, partners, and clients to conduct and analyze research that informed the organization’s five year strategic plan. Connell says Sulaimanova brought a phenomenal level of knowledge and research ability that will be “instrumental in helping us get where we want to be in the future.”
Sulaimanova is one of 64 international leaders who contributed their skills and expertise to U.S. domestic organizations through the Community Solutions Program (CSP), bringing substantive, lasting change to American communities.
Leaders from around the world brought their technical skills and unique country perspectives to bear on community improvement in the U.S. Emese Hortobagyi , another CSP leader, came from Hungary to the Citizens Union in New York [14], where she developed a social media and communications framework, which the organization still uses to reach a wider audience and attract fans.
Albert Gasake from Rwanda worked at New Foundations Nonviolence Center [15] in Colorado, developing a new volunteer management strategy, an important area of growth for the organization. According to former Executive Director Tahverlee Dunlop, “Gasake brought a fresh perspective on managing and retaining volunteers.” That new perspective, Dunlop says, will influence how the center operates well into the future.
Innovation is an invaluable contribution that international leaders can bring to domestic organizations. A new perspective can unleash potential areas of growth and collaboration. Abel Hurtado has years of experience of working with indigenous populations in Peru, which he put to use at the National Congress of American Indians [16]. He led stimulating discussions with tribal leadership on the benefits of U.S. tribal government participation in international indigenous issues.
A similar shift in perspective happened at the Great Basin Resource Watch [17], in Reno, Nevada, where Thy Heang from Cambodia demonstrated how much U.S. environmental law and public processes inform and influence similar laws and processes in other countries, where open government critiques are not accepted. This led the organization to consider how their work will impact resource extraction internationally in their future work plans.
Nobody knows the type of impact and innovation an international leader can bring better than Maureen Gagliardi, Director of Career Education at the St. John’s Shelter Program for Women and Children [18] in Sacramento, California. Upon arrival from Uganda, Patrick Temera made an impression on Gagliardi with his willingness to listen to the women at the shelter without judgment, showing compassion and insight into their struggles. Temera was especially tuned in to the struggles of the single mothers at the shelter and wanted to learn more about the roles that the fathers played in their children’s lives, beyond occasional child support checks. Temera worked closely with shelter staff to rejuvenate the shelter’s intake processes to better understand their clients’ situations and motivations.
Temera’s intensive work with the women at the shelter led him to develop new counseling and mentorship programs, which build problem-solving skills and set good examples for the shelter’s clients. Gagliardi says that Temera helped her and the shelter staff to realize that their support programs are “not so much about telling women what to do, but providing them the knowledge and the desire to do it themselves with our guidance and support.”
Interested in learning more about hosting an international leader in your community? Visit our program page [13] to view an interactive map demonstrating where the 2011 leaders were hosted. Also visit our information for organizations page [19] to view a short video of past hosts describing their experiences working with CSP’s global community leaders and to submit an application to host.
The Community Solutions Program [13] is a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs [20] of the U.S. Department of State, and is implemented by IREX.