WAWIRA NJIRU: There’s a lot of pressure that comes with trying to solve a massive problem that hasn't been solved yet.
[Aerial footage showing various communities in crisis—an ambulance transports a COVID patient, food distribution centers, flooding in a neighborhood, refugee camps, and protests. Text appears on-screen: Ford Global Fellows. Meet our global partners. Together, we’re creating a collective laboratory. Speaker: Wawira Njiru, Kenya]
The spirit of the fellowship and the creation of that sense of community has been transformative for me. What the fellowship does is break down barriers to enable leaders to feel that they are not alone.
[text on-screen: A supportive space to foster innovation and action]
[Speaker: Melsa Auma Omaya, Kenya]
MELSA AUMA OMAYA: The fellowship has provided a platform to have honest conversations with leaders who are bringing different perspectives on fighting inequity. It’s a free space to embrace vulnerability, and also an opportunity to design, to reimagine the solutions to those problems.
[A globe appears and spins against a white background. The faces of Ford Global Fellows populate the globe based on the country in which they work. Concentric circles radiate out from each fellow, overlapping with the others across the globe to create a network.]
[Speaker: Tarek Zeidan, Lebanon]
TAREK ZEIDAN: It is the first real attempt that I’ve seen of what solving global problems looks like when you convene local actors. The most pressing problems in the world today completely ignore borders. Climate change, economic inequality, cybersecurity, international migration and displacement, human rights violations, or the vaccine apartheid. But, we’re all experiencing it differently. And part of the puzzle, in solving the problem in both locales, is comparing and contrasting these experiences.
[Speaker: Maria Town, United States]
MARIA TOWN: What this really is, is investing in communities in a slightly different way. Inequality is not new. It’s persisted in the ways that we have structured our global economies, our education systems, the ways that we live and breathe and love.
[Scenes of various communities and cultures from around the world are transformed into separate circles against a white background, before all unify to form one globe]
The solution is not going to come from one place or industry or one person. And you’re not going to solve it in a year. I’m excited to have this community of people to learn and grow with over a long period of time.
[Ford Foundation logo: a globe made up of a series of small, varied circles]
