After two years of groundwork (including mastering the skill of screen printing, developing a website and networking), Aspecks is pleased to be launching their first large scale promotional endeavour in the form of the Global Citizen Campaign. This campaign will particularly target the UK university students as well as global society at large (with fliers printed on recycled paper, competitions and other promotions) in order to get more people to engage with the aspecks website as contributors, demonstrating to others that we all belong to a single global community to which we have responsibilities. We hope that the Global Citizen Campaign will spawn new A.S.P.E.C.K.S societies within the student bodies and other communities that we come into contact with and culminate in a cultural exchange event at the end of the year.

On Monday 22 February 2010, the UK is celebrating Student Volunteering Week and this day also marks the start of Fairtrade fortnight. These two events provide the perfect launchpad for the Aspecks Global Citizen Campaign and also offer a wonderful opportunity to directly engage with student bodies and other stakeholders to raise awareness of the campaign.

Our plan is simple; to reach out to students through their universities and other target audiences because we believe that by engaging with like-minded individuals and communities we can facilitate a dialogue of cultural exchange and the pooling of global skills and knowledge. Consequently, the Aspecks website has been designed to allow registered users to create and upload their own content to share with the world.

What is its purpose?

To spread awareness of global issues and how they relate to us all. Our ideology is that we see all people as equal regardless of their respective cultural, national and religious differences. Although we consider everybody to be distinct individuals, with unique identities, we believe that all people have many aspecks of their interests, ideas and experiences in common. We believe that the exchange of culture, knowledge and skills increases compatibility between social groups and subcultures – in a similar manner to the unifying ability of music or sport.

Rationalising the Global Citizen Concept

We believe that we are all global citizens. Despite superficial obvious differences, we share one planet in which communal issues arise that affect us all. The world is becoming ever more interconnected and whilst there must be local solutions to local problems there must also be global agreement about how to to deal with global issues such as climate change, sustainable development, social division and poverty. Sometimes these issues overlap significantly so by highlighting and discussing them we can break them down in a way that all people can understand and appreciate. By facilitating this debate we hope to broaden our understanding of the privileges and responsibilities that come with being a global citizen.

What can you contribute to the campaign?

Individuals are not to be left out; please sign up for an aspecks account and contact us to contribute to the ‘global citizen’ discourse using a a form of expression that suits you (even if you are not interested in joining our internship competition) . You can contribute almost anything of interest for publishing on the website. One of our aims is to be able to host Aspecks Cultural Events – celebrating global cultural diversity from music and arts to dancing and cooking. We can not do this alone which is why we seek your support. We are always willing to open dialogue with all types of organisations and other social enterprises to explore ways in which we may be able to collaborate together.

Global Citizen Campaign Competition: How it Works | Global Mamas