What does it mean to be sustainable?  How can we build community between diverse social factions? What is the role of service in achieving sustainability? These were some of the questions posed to the six ICU students who took part in Global Link 2015 this July.

Global Link is a selective summer program for International Christian University (ICU) students in New York City. Centered on the theme of “Service & Sustainability,” the one-month long program exposes ICU students to some of the key factors concerning economic, environmental and social sustainability, as well as the importance of service within our increasingly globalized world.

The six ICU students arrived at the Japan ICU Foundation’s office early Monday morning on July 6th. Some of them had spent the weekend in NYC and had experienced their first July 4th celebrations – fireworks and all! Others had arrived only the day before and were still battling jet lag. Regardless, they all arrived with open minds and a genki attitude.

The four weeks they spent in New York City were filled with stimulating and thought provoking activities that aimed to challenge both their bodies and their minds. At the beginning of the program, each student was given a compilation of readings about economic, environmental and social sustainability. The readings ranged from chapters of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson to Pope Francis’s Papal Call to Action: On Planet in Distress. The readings also complimented the activities of each week.

For example, in the first week the students read about the opportunities and problems that arise in neighborhoods that are rapidly changing. To bring those topics to life, JICUF staff led them into the city where they took part in a historical walking tour of Harlem, visited the Brooklyn Grange to learn about urban rooftop farming, served food at the Bowery Mission soup kitchen and went to the Tenement Museum where they had a walking tour of a restored tenement building and heard the stories of the actual people who had lived in those apartments as immigrants during the Great Depression. The remaining three weeks were filled with other engaging activities such as a volunteering with Habitat for Humanity to help rebuild a home on Staten Island that had been damaged by Hurricane Sandy, a tour of the United Nations and Lunch with Japanese Ambassador to the UN Motohide Yoshikawa, a camping trip to Taconic Outdoors Center where they went on a 3 hour guided hike and a professional networking event with local ICU alumni and friends.

The month-long program culminated in group presentations by the students on a topic related to sustainability and their experience in NYC. Their schedules were packed, but they still managed to find time to put together well-researched, thoughtful presentations that impressed us all.

We hope that this program has provided them inspiration in their future endeavors as global leaders and graduates of ICU.