How the World Affairs Council is working to bring global awareness to the next generation of leaders and how to get involved

By Flo Nicolas, Get Resource Smart

On this week’s episode of Get Resource Smart, Flo speaks with Executive Director Tim Horgan and International Visitor Program Director Anise Jasman-Sayers of the World Affairs Council about how and why international events have critical impacts on us in New Hampshire. Tom and Anise provide insight to the beauty and importance of interacting with other cultures, how they’re working to bring global awareness to our next generation of future leaders, and how everyone in New Hampshire can get more involved both passively and actively.

Flo Nicolas:

What is the World Affairs Council? How does it relate to New Hampshire?

Tim Horgan:

We've actually been around since 1954, but have seen a lot of growth over the past 10 to 15 years and now have around 350 full-time staff members. What we're trying to do here in the state is to help people better understand what's going on around the world. Obviously, with things like the global pandemic, with the war in Ukraine, with global supply chains being snarled around the world, there's a lot that goes on that impacts us in our daily lives whether we see it or not. We're really trying to give people the opportunity to meet with, to explore, to discuss, to have conversations around what is driving the world today, and what they can do to get involved – from simple things like clicking on more articles about global affairs, to meeting with our international visitors, or talking to their congressional delegation about what they'd like to see the US government do abroad in their name. Because everything that the US government does, reflects on us as Americans. 

Flo Nicolas:

At the end of the day, we're not alone, right? The US is not the only country, we’ve got to remember that. There are other worlds around us. And not only that, we are also very cultural. We have citizens that are coming in from different countries. But why is it important? Why, now more than ever, is it important that we are more aware of who we are here in New Hampshire, and our relationships with other countries? 

Tim Horgan:

As you mentioned, New Hampshire is actually more global than it was even 10-15 years ago. We see a lot of migration and immigration of people from around the world to the States. I was just at an event at Plymouth State University on foreign direct investments here in the state. About 8% of our economy and the jobs in the state are directly funded through foreign direct investment. So having the opportunity to understand who our new neighbors are, whether they are moving here for jobs, or they are moving here as refugees or as immigrants, it's important to understand where they're coming from, who they are, and what is driving them to come here. Because if you can't understand where someone is coming from, how are you going to understand who they are as a person? 

[Our organization is] nonpartisan, we are the platform for discussion. We are not here to tell you what to think. We want people to come experience the conversation, push back where they want to push back, have a respectful conversation. But we have no other requirements on what our conversations are. We want these to be community-driven discussions, and we open our doors to everyone. We want the public to be there. We want to have challenging conversations. The only thing we ask of people is that they're respectful.

Flo Nicolas:

Anise, what is your role with the organization?

Anise Jasman-Sayers:

I manage our International Visitor Leadership Program and the Open World Leadership Program. These individuals are nominated to come to the US on a two to three week journey, visiting anywhere from three to six states on professional topics. They come to our city, their meeting with resources, they're building a better understanding and learning about Americans. You can watch TV, and you can learn about this and you can learn about that. But how do you really know somebody? Open up your door, invite them in for dinner, have a conversation, learn about their culture, give them an opportunity to learn about us. You walk out the door, you have a friend. Build more friends around the world, you have less enemies.

Flo Nicolas:

Let's talk about students. I feel like with students, there's so much opportunity for them to learn and grow, and I feel like their exposure to various cultures is very critical. How are you working with students in terms of some of your programs?

Tim Horgan:

This is one of the problems we see here in New Hampshire – if you look at the state standards of curriculum, there is no requirement for any sort of global learning. The students we do interact with tell us that they're disappointed in their high school experience, because their entire global education maybe boils down to one geography class. Now, there are some schools out there that are doing great work and have amazing teachers who are really engaged and teaching this stuff to them. But for the most part, we don't see a lot of that. And so we're trying to create opportunities for the students to engage in global conversations, think about different cultures and backgrounds differently, and there are a number of things that we do around that. 

One, through the International Visitors Program, is by bringing visitors to the classroom and giving the kids the opportunity to talk with these visitors about whatever they want. We have our visitors give a little bit of background about their country, maybe what their lives are like back home, and then the students are able to ask questions and we've seen some really amazing questions asked. 

Another thing we do is bring speakers from our Speakers Program side into the classroom to give presentations to the students on critical global topics. Last year, we had the former ambassador to NATO talk to high school students about why NATO is important in terms of the war in Ukraine and why we continue to need NATO. 

Then the final thing I want to talk about in terms of interacting with our high school students is how we've started to do some diplomacy simulations created by the US Department of State. They have about seven or eight modules that students can choose from, and it was amazing to bring this into the classroom and see the engagement of the students go through that process of what it looks like to be a representative of the UN, to be a representative of a government, to be a representative of a nonprofit working there. And it was so amazing to see these students get so engaged. It was so cool to see that they really dove into this in a way that maybe they don't have that opportunity to in other aspects of their studies.

Flo Nicolas:

From your perspective, how can New Hampshire residents become more involved? What is it that your organization is hoping for in terms of engagement from the community?

Tim Horgan:

We're really looking to have people just think more about what's going on in the world and understand it better. You talk with these visitors, and a lot of them know more about what's going on in the US than the people here in New Hampshire. They are so interested and engaged. And obviously the US is one of the world leaders in many, many fields so there is a lot of interest in what's going on in the US, but we don't see as much of that interest in the world from coming out of New Hampshire in particular. So we want to give people those easy opportunities to engage with the world. 

That can be from listening to our monthly Global in the Granite State podcast that brings in experts to talk about different critical issues. We just did one on immigration, and the great thing about it was that it's not the cable news roundtable where people are there yelling at each other and nothing actually gets talked about. We had a professor from Southern Methodist University talk about why it's so difficult for Western democracies to get the immigration issue right – not just the US, Europe has had a lot of challenges around immigration as well. And you see a very unique dynamic in the response to the war in Ukraine and the acceptance of refugees there, versus what's gone on in the Middle East and some of the hesitancy to work to integrate those communities into Europe, and what we see on our southern border. We were able to get away from the heated rhetoric and have an actual conversation. And that's what we love. It’s a great way to get started in those conversations and really come at them from a fact-based discussion rather than, “I want to score my political points”-type discussion. 

We also do our speakers program and cover a lot of ground in that space. We had a professor from Cornell do a virtual program on reenvisioning, reimagining, reunderstanding the history and contributions of Africa to the world. We have a three part series coming up on rising anti-semitism and genocide around the world, but we're not looking at it from, “here are some horrible, terrible statistics”. It’s about what leads to a genocide, what is the US government currently doing around the world to try and bring an end to these atrocities, and then how the communities recover. We give people some sort of understanding of what's going on, but also some hope that there are solutions and how people can be involved in some of that work. We really rely on local people to come in and give those perspectives to talk about their experiences. 

And then, as we've been talking, the International Visitor Program is just such an easy way for people to get involved, whether it's through their work, through their community, or through opening their homes. My favorite part of that is that you get such a great opportunity to bust myths about us. We had a group from Russia that wanted to meet with the state police and see all the cool technology, and then afterwards we were talking to them and they're like, “Well, we're a little disappointed in that meeting.” We asked, what are you talking about? We did what you asked for, you got to see the cars, you got to see the forensics lab where they do all the CSI stuff from the shows. And they said, “Well, we thought we would see the really cool stuff like in the Die Hard movies.” A majority of them have never been in the country, so they only have the media to understand what the US is really like, and many people think we all live in giant cities like New York and LA because that's what you see in the movies. And we have the opportunity to learn from them about what their countries are really like as well.

Flo Nicolas:

How can residents in New Hampshire get more involved in being international ambassadors?

Anise Jasman-Sayers:

Reach out to me! ajasman@wacnh.org. I can talk to you about all the opportunities. In reference to home hospitality, I want to break a myth: you don't need a big home, you can have an apartment, it can be a single table, it could be one person, you could be on a budget. Anybody and everybody. It can be that community barbecue where the whole community comes together. We're trying to provide these opportunities and provide more unique opportunities by trying to do community events, so we’ll be reaching out to faith-based organizations with some of our home hospitality hosts. My best ambassadors are ones who have had visitors come into their home, having them bring friends and family into a home setting, to have these conversations and potentially bring visitors in. Having that opportunity firsthand to meet these individuals, whether in school or sitting there around a table, having a conversation and learning more about each other. But it's also diving into deep conversations. Everybody in the world builds a perception based on what you see, and when you can actually sit face-to-face and get that information, you're gonna get more sound information, make a better judgment call, and you're a better person not only to yourself, but to those around you, because they're also learning from you.

Flo Nicolas is an attorney, co-founder and COO of DEI Directive, a  Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion  technology firm that provides a comprehensive DEI Intelligence Platform. She also produces Get Tech Smart and Get Resource Smart, which she shares with partners in The Granite State News Collaborative.