A Shaper agenda in 2020: stay safe, connect, and change the world!
by Juan Azcarreta-Ortiz and Zsofia Szlamka (Curatorship of Global Shapers Cambridge 2020–2021)
Hi reader, welcome to this article in which you can learn about Global Shapers Cambridge. We will share a bit about the work of our Hub and how we moved our projects to the online space because of the pandemic. We started the month of September with a lot of energy and we have good news: we are recruiting! Applications will be accepted until the 4th of October, so don’t miss out.
At the beginning of 2020, members of the Global Shapers Cambridge Hub, just like any other Hub in the community, were looking forward to a new exciting year: working on global challenges in the form of local projects, socialising with Hub members, attending events across the world, mingling with this amazing global community. However, while preparing our application for curatorship for the term 2020–2021, little did we expect having to face one of the greatest global challenges of our generation. Namely, COVID-19.
Supporting members in the time of crisis: adapting expectations
The Global Shapers Community is the flagship youth initiative of the World Economic Forum. Young people join Hubs on a local basis as volunteers. In Cambridge Hub, our membership criteria include attending our monthly meetings and contributing to at least one Hub project. This approach has so far proved to be an effective way for Hub members to be engaged with the entire community and for projects to flourish.
As you can imagine, the health emergency changed it all: nationwide lockdown measures and travel restrictions meant that this year we could not go ahead with Hub activities as we had planned. Some members had to relocate, take care of relatives, or just focus entirely on their full-time job or enterprise, all put at risk due to the crisis.
As curator and vice-curator of the Hub, we wanted to come up with ways in which we could support Hub members in these unprecedented times. First, back in May, we organised virtual one-to-one coffee sessions with all Cambridge Shapers. The aim of these sessions was to understand how their conditions changed, what their new life looked like, and to set realistic goals to achieve together for the upcoming. We learnt that trust and communication are paramount in these times, and that receiving support from the Hub to manage personal circumstances can help.
We also realised that expectations towards Hub members have to be adjusted to circumstances set by the pandemic. By having the right expectations, we have been able to make some good progress in different Hub projects and we have also tried to leverage working remotely. For example, in our project VOICES, we transformed our workshops to monthly webinars, allowing us to reach an international audience. We have also started a project on sustainable fashion and successfully hosted a pilot webinar in August.
Creating and curating an online community
After our monthly Hub meetings, we used to hang out together in a famous Cambridge pub called the Mill (good old days!). Sadly, that’s not possible under the current circumstances, so we had to be more imaginative to stay connected. After all, while working on impactful projects is the bread and butter of the Hub, the Global Shapers Community also offers the opportunity to connect with thousands of young leaders across the world.
Besides holding our monthly meetings virtually, we organised casual online meetings where members had the opportunity to talk about their hobbies or something they are passionate about. We have also hosted online socials with other Hubs and attended the first virtual Global Shapers Summit that more than +5000 Shapers joined. Finally, this year our regional community (UK, Ireland, and Benelux) is more active than ever, with our first regional virtual retreat hosted by the Edinburgh Hub just over a week ago!
However, “Zoom fatigue” is real. We all spent hundreds of hours sitting in front of our computers and we all wish we could go back to normal. Now that lockdown restrictions are easing (as for today), we are planning to have a hybrid model for our Hub’s operations from October: while keeping online meetings, we would slowly start organising small-group physical gatherings.
In a nutshell…
…managing a Hub this year has been harder than usual. Thanks to the work done by previous curators and the leadership shown by our Hub members, we are now ready to grow as a community.
By applying to our Hub, you will be able to work on projects with social impact and get support from a group of young global leaders with the ambition to change the world. If you want to know more about the projects we are working on, please visit our website.
We encourage you to apply to become a member of the Cambridge Hub. We are delighted to invite you to the Global Shapers family!
