by George J Elbaum

This was the sixth consecutive year that I spoke at Charles Wright Academy’s (CWA) Global Summit, which this year consisted of the 75 students of the CWA freshmen class and 34 high school students and teachers from China, Colombia, Germany and Poland, the visitors staying with CWA host families during their visit, as usual.  The annual Global Summit is a 10-day program designed to promote peace and social justice by exposing the visiting students to and developing their understanding of the concepts of universal human rights and justice, fair trade and sustainable life styles, and by demonstrating how the choices that each of us makes every day can impact the world. The core of the Summit is a series of speakers whose personal experiences reflect directly on these subjects, and their presentations are followed by group discussions on these very concepts. My presentation was the first time that most of these students heard directly from a Holocaust survivor, and their subsequent comments and questions were very interesting.

This year’s Summit was organized & managed by Ann Vogel, CWA’s International Student Coordinator, who picked up the baton from founder & past organizer Nick Coddington, who departed this summer for doctoral studies at Columbia University.  However, Ann is not a newcomer to the Summit, having volunteered & helped coordinate it before her son graduated from CWA and now when her daughter is a CWA student.