The Clinton Global Initiative University, an international college conference to solve global issues, is coming to UCSD from April 1 to 4. Former President Bill Clinton and a host of celebrities, including actor Sean Penn, will attend the event.
The three-day event will begin with an opening reception at RIMAC Arena. Saturday will be include skill workshops and feature sessions, and Sunday will involve a large-scale student community service project to be completed off campus. Clinton will be present all three days. All conference attendees are required to spearhead a project that must be fulfilled within the following year. The projects are required to improve social or environmental conditions are universities or communities across the world.
As of Jan. 25, 19 applicants from UCSD have been accepted. The application deadline is Feb. 7. About 3,000 applications have been received so far.
“The goal is to gather the community and to see how students are really interested to seeing how it is outside the community,” Eleanor Roosevelt College sophomore and CGI U representative Melissa Etehad said.
Of the 1,200 participants, a maximum of 240, or 20 percent of the applicants, can be from UCSD.
“They’re so many projects throughout the entire world that can help people all over,” she said. “We’re passionate about making a change. We want people to know that UCSD are making a difference outside of the community.”
Last year, 1,500 students from 344 universities came from all 50 states to CGI U at the University of Miami. More than a quarter of them were international students from 77 different countries. Over the past three CGIU meetings, representatives from 575 schools, 99 countries and all 50 states were present.
The CGI U team announced that it is holding the conference at UCSD largely because of its reputation for the student body’s commitment to service.
“As the no. 1 for university service, commitment to service, giving back, UCSD came up to be a perfect fit,” CGI U Director Keisha Senter said. “The campus embraced us. It’s an amazing university, a great campus.”
Community service proposals require a tangible action plan on one of the subjects of education, environment and climate change, peace and human rights, poverty alleviation and public health.
“Students are able to propose a community service project in any of the five,” Senter said. “We thought it would be a perfect fit to engage a student body that is already activated and energized, and mobilized around some of our key issues.
With 1,200 students participating in the conference, including international students, there are various logistical issues to handle, like transportation, accommodation and security. The coordinators said they are confident it will all come together since UCSD has hosted high-profile gatherings in the past.
“We work with hotels, security to pull off a safe and fun opportunity for students,” Senter said. “We will rely heavily on local security to help out.”
UCSD Community Law Project Director and National City Vice Mayor Alejandra Sotelo-Solis, along with the Center for Student Involvement, are working with the CGI U staff to prepare for the event and coordinate 800 to 900 students to complete a service project in San Diego county.
“For CGI U, this [will be] the last day of the conference, it’s really putting into practice the theories that you’re going to be learning about — [having] workshops, hearing from the keynote speakers, putting that energy to work,” Sotelo-Solis said.
Sotelo-Solis expects everything to be finalized by the end of the month.
“Our role as part of the Center for Student Involvement will be to identify areas that will be ideal for a community service project,l” she said. “Again recognizing the number of people, what services they provide, rain contingency, a lot of variables that come into play — security for the President. It’s a great team that we have going.” The CGIU student organization at UCSD has done tabling and advertisements to the student population.
Students such as Etehad have been working to prepare.
“What we’ve done is that we’ve done tabling, we have this event and make advertisements so that people can learn more about the issues that are involved with global affairs, and they come here, they listen to this, get excited to go and they submit their application,” Etehad said. “The goal … is to prepare for the conference and make a community of UCSD students who are taking on a challenge, making a difference in the world.”
While Senter said she could not disclose the overall cost of the event, she said it is free for all students who are accepted to the program.
“We, President Clinton, along with the CGI, think it’s going to be a great event,” Senter.