75 people have become members of Goducate’s Global Life Hub since its launch in August. They are mostly undergraduates, and some are working professionals. They enjoy coming to the center to practise their English and to learn about the outside world, and are generally reluctant to leave.
There are three regular activities. Every Tuesday there are sessions with a group of 4 American business consultants. Every Wednesday, members are given a general topic to talk about, to let them practise public speaking. And every Friday, there are group discussions and debates to enable the members to learn how to reason, to organize their ideas, to think out of the box, and to present and defend their perspective in a convincing way.
In addition, twice a month people working in multinational corporations are invited to the Global Life Hub to talk to the members about corporate life. For instance, we’ve had a speaker with 10 years’ experience in the software industry talk about how the corporate world is different from the college world, and about the interviewer’s perspective on interviews. He demonstrated his talk with an interview of one of the members. On another occasion, in a very interactive session, a speaker who had worked in the USA for couple of years and now working in Mumbai came to guide students about how they should plan their career paths. There has also been a mechanical engineer who worked in Saudi Arabia for a couple of months who shared about life and opportunities in the Middle East.
Members have also learnt about life in Australia and the culture and education system there from an Australian English-language teacher, and about American festivals and food from visiting American consultants.
To teach members leadership skills, two of them were appointed the organizers of an excursion last month to explore Hyderabad city. They organized the whole program, spoke only in English the whole day, and made all the other participants feel comfortable speaking in English even outside the center.
We believe that the activities offered at the Global Life Hub will give our existing members, and we hope many more potential members, a good foundation for fitting into the modern job market.
