Top takeaways from the Annual Curators Meeting and the Global Shapers Summit 2020
by Kara Eusebio and Eric Neudorf, Curator and Vice Curator of the Ottawa Hub
As curators in the Ottawa Hub of the Global Shapers Community, we recently had the opportunity to connect with other Shapers from around the world, first through the Annual Curator Meeting in June, and then through the Global Shapers Summit in September. Born out of the World Economic Forum, the Global Shapers Community is a network of inspiring young people working together to address local, regional, and global challenges.
In June, we connected with 780 other Curators and Vice Curators through the Annual Curators Meeting (ACM), where we exchanged ideas about leadership participated in planning sessions for the year ahead. Then, in September, we met with nearly 4,000 Global Shapers from around the world during the Global Shapers Summit. It’s always incredibly inspiring and invigorating to chat with fellow Shapers and share ideas.
Here are our top five takeaways from the ACM and the Summit:
Virtual conferences can work! — The ACM and the Shapers Summit, held completely on Zoom, gave us a lot of ideas for gathering our Hub virtually for meetings and retreats. The World Economic Forum and Global Shapers Team did a great job at utilizing polls and multiple breakout rooms to maintain high engagement throughout the meeting. We’ve taken some of these engagement techniques into our own meetings and have found especially that having dedicated Shaper Social time at the end of the meeting with small groups in breakout rooms has been a great way to catch up casually and keep our sense of community strong.
A lot of Hubs are in the same stage of growth as us — Every time we are in a room with other Hub Curators and Vice Curators, we troubleshoot, share best practices, and find new ways to collaborate. The ACM and Shapers Summit were no exception to this rule. We exchanged Hub charters, talked about resources, and shared challenges. We especially enjoyed our discussions with hubs that have grown quickly over the last few years, just like ours. With a bigger group, it has become more challenging to ensure that our sense of community remains strong, with opportunities for all of our members to give their best. One of the ways we’ve tackled this challenge is to distribute leadership roles more evenly among our Hub members. Each and every member of our Hub is a formidable leader, and we are committed to providing leadership opportunities to Hub members who are looking to grow (e.g., communications coordinator, treasurer, social leads). We shared about this leadership model with our fellow curators at the ACM, and also heard from them about their own efforts to move toward a distributed leadership model.
We don’t always have to recreate the wheel — Shapers always have fresh ideas to improve our communities. The ACM and Shapers Summits reminded us that some of the great strength of our community also comes from amplifying and supporting organizations that are already leading the charge in climate change, equity and inclusion, employment and other critical issues. The Forum has a very successful partnership with the Climate Reality Project. The Forum could have created its own climate training program but made the more impactful decision to collaborate. This collaboration is a great reminder to our Hub and others to look for ways to support existing organizations who are doing phenomenal work here in Ottawa.
Note: Does your organization have an opportunity to collaborate? Do you have an idea for how the Ottawa Shapers could help deliver on your big idea? Reach out to us at globalshapersottawa@gmail.com to chat!
Our communications campaigns have been noticed! We are so fortunate to have an extremely talented Communications Lead, Mariana Savka, who led a very successful influencer campaign during our Ottawa Against Corona project. We were able to profile a number of community leaders during our Unsung Heroes campaign including our Hub’s own Osman Raza, an ER doctor on the front lines during COVID. We also profiled Operation Ramzieh, Adoption Council of Canada, Somerset West Community Health Centre, Karla Briones, Cornerstone Housing for Women, and Consul General of Canada in Atlanta Nadia Theodore, bringing light to impactful individuals and organizations fighting against inequality and for better health outcomes in our city. Our efforts were noticed by the Global Shapers Community team in Geneva, and Mariana shared the details of our influencer campaign and Unsung Heroes initiatives with Shapers from around the world. We were so proud that our Hub made such a difference through this work and are grateful for the new partnerships we have forged.
We need to integrate diversity, equity and inclusion into every project and activity we undertake — The Global Shapers Community has spoken out strongly against racism, especially systemic anti-Black racism, which even occurs in many of our own hubs worldwide. We had some very insightful conversations with our fellow Hub members about the importance of mainstreaming anti-racist and diversity, equity, and inclusion guiding principles into each and every project and Hub activity. We understand that even if the main focus of a project or activity is not anti-racism, we still must consider how all of the actions we take can be truly inclusive and anti-racist. We also heard from some of our fellow Hubs around the world about the challenges of adapting some inclusive programming into their Hubs. For example, in some areas, Hubs cannot openly run LGBTQ2S+ Pride campaigns through their Hubs because of safety concerns for their members. These Hubs noted that they continue to have internal discussions about how to honour their LGBTQ2S+ community members despite these restrictions and while keeping safety a top priority for vulnerable members of their cities. Here in the Ottawa Hub, we were reminded of the incredible privilege we have to publicly speak up and advocate in support of underrepresented groups in our community.
While we hope to reconnect with our fellow Global Shapers Community members as soon as it’s safe to do, we’re grateful for the chance to share #ShaperLove during the ACM and Shapers Summit. We’re looking forward to a great 2020–2021 Shaper year! See you somewhere virtually in the coming months!
