Thinking+Big,+Thinking+Beyond

**Thinking Big, Thinking Beyond** Carina Clark 

**Identity**

It is in building and exploring our identities that we can find how we relate to the rest of the world around us and fit into an increasingly global world. Who we are and how we relate to the world around us will effect what we decide to do with our lives, where we go and how we deal with the problems that we’ll face.

How does your identity change when you learn about or are faced by something foreign to you? When you meet someone or experience a culture that has different beliefs and viewpoints than you, how does that effect you?

**Sense of Place**

We feel more comfortable in our home-place or towns that we’re familiar with. There is something about that place that makes us feel a part of a community – like we have a place to be and a role to play. When we go to new places, we have to find how we fit into them and how we’ll relate to the community that they hold.

Think about the communities that other group members are describing. How are their communities like your own? How are they different? How could working with the people of that community be challenging? How would you relate to the people of that community? What is a community that lives in your hometown that seems foreign to you? How do you interact with the people of that community?

**Working in a Group**

We’ve talked about bringing open minds and our individual perspectives to the group work and conversation here at GLIP. Being good communicators is also important. One of the difficulties of communicating with people from other cultures and communities is that we think about things and describe things differently – from our own viewpoints. This can be a strength, in that it means we can have a group that thinks outside the box. On the other hand, it can be very difficult to communicate with people who speak different languages and have different values.

How can we represent ourselves and our communities while still being open to the ideas and values of others? How can we do our best to communicate with people who might speak different languages, have different ideas and being different viewpoints and understandings to the group? Does being more globally-minded mean we come to one conclusion or does it mean that we value the diverse viewpoints of different cultural groups? Through what mediums (newspapers, blogs, television, etc) should we try to communicate with members of other communities around the world?

**Local Problems and Solutions**

As a group, we’ve brought many kinds of problems to discuss from our own communities, though we proved to have some similar concerns about the violence, environments and diversity in each of our communities across the world. Being aware that some problems move beyond our local communities – that they effect many communities around the world – can help change our perspectives and ideas about how to solve those problems. All of our group members, as time goes on, will have to deal with these problems in our own communities, but also in reference to other communities and how they are trying to solve the same problems. If we are all looking at the same problems, then working together might be the best solution.

What are the problems that many communities around the globe experience? What do we need to know about those problems, their causes and effects to be able to understand them? How might you look to your own community for solutions to bigger global problems? How can we make our communities aware of the problems that are happening in other place – especially those problems that are similar to our own? How can we contact other communities about the problems we have in common? What skills do we need to have to be able to communicate with other communities?

**We have What It Takes**

<span style="color: #000080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Facing some of the world’s biggest issues, like violence, environmental deterioration and inequity, takes bravery and persistence. It is also going to take a willingness to learn and be more aware of the world around us. We need to be aware of how the decisions we make and the actions we take effect not only our own communities, but the world at large. We prepare for tackling these issues by learning more about the world around us and how it is all interconnected.

<span style="color: #000080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">When we buy products from other countries, how are we supporting or hurting other communities around the world? When we elect community leaders, how are we making changes that will affect our relationships with other communities and other countries? What should those relationships be like?