Welcome to our global service-learning venture!

In Our Global Village began with a collaboration across continents—a friendship between Barbara Cervone, president of What Kids Can Do, and the students of a tiny secondary school she visited in a rural village in Tanzania.

“For us, greeting and shaking hands is like breathing,” these young people told Barbara, showing her the ritual three-part African handshake. “It communicates solidarity.” For days, they took her around the village, introducing her to its ways and traditions, its people and their challenges.

Out of that exploration and documentation by youth, a remarkable book took shape: In Our Village: Kambi ya Simba Through the Eyes of Its Youth.

Its young authors still could not believe that anyone outside their village would care about their story and their lives. “It astounds us,” the students told Barbara, as she took their words, photographs, songs, and stories home to publish through What Kids Can Do.

Now the solidarity they created has traveled far beyond that first handshake. It has sparked a program that connects young people on five continents who gather and share their own local stories so that the world can learn from them.

In Our Global Village invites you and your students to create a book about their “village” — their community, in whatever form it takes.

You can publish a print version of the book they make, to share far and wide. And you can contribute a virtual copy so others can view it on this website.

This site maintains a digital library of the books published by young people worldwide as part of In Our Global Village. (We upload them as they are published).

We offer plenty of help: a curriculum guide, publishing tips, special projects between the students in Kambi ya Simba and U.S. school children, and photos from visits by U.S. teachers to the village.

If you haven't already done so, please flip through the online version of In Our Village: Kambi ya Simba Through the Eyes of Its Youth and check out the short videos the Kambi ya Simba students made about their village.

They will surely inspire you and your students to create your own IOGV book. And we are looking forward to reading it! Please let us know how we can help.

— Cathryn Berger Kaye, M.A., international service learning consultant,

and Barbara Cervone, President, What Kids Can Do (WKCD)