Student Highlights Impressions from CGI U 2016

Three Martin School students had the honor of attending the Clinton Global Initiative University in California the first weekend of April. To be selected, students submitted proposals to address a need in education, public health, human rights, poverty, or climate change. Beta Ardiansyah, a second-year Martin School student, was selected to participate in the three-day conference with other students from all over the world. The goal of his proposal is "to end child labor in rubber-farmer households in the Rambang Lubay Indonesia," which he hopes to achieve through subsidizing family income to free up children to go to school.

He really enjoyed the speakers, especially Salman Khan, the CEO of Khan Academy. One of his big takeaways from that particular session was simple—"don’t waste inspiration"! Even if they come to you at 2 am, write them down.

While some of the sessions were more general, others were focused on the practical details of implementing the possible solutions to complex problems in the student project proposals. Beta attended sessions that concentrated on how to maintain your network, fundraising, and marketing your ideas. These sessions gave Beta tangible ideas to make his project better; he realized that for the sake of scalability, his methods would need to be adjusted so that he could get buy-in from all stakeholders.

What was the best feature of the conference? “Networking!” Beta shared, “developing countries in the world have a similar problem” in education, so being able to talk about how different groups have had success in the area was great.

Students who may be interested in participating next year, Beta says he would recommend it 125 percent!

Read CGI’s recap here.