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Members of Goducate’s Global LifeSkills Center in India get to “Meet America”

On July 19, Goducate’s Global LifeSkills Center (formerly known as the Global Life Hub) in Hyderabad, India, held a special full-day program called “Meet America”. Learning about global life in a classroom cannot match the experience of mixing with foreigners. And it is rarely that university students in India get an opportunity to mix with foreigners, even though they do come across some on the streets.

Exposure to the international world is vital for students’ development and for their career prospects. For those who might have a chance to go abroad for further studies or to work, such exposure during their undergraduate days will ease their adjustment to life abroad. With this in mind, we invited a group of 10 Americans from different professions to spend a day with our members. These Americans happened to be visiting Hyderabad.

Half the day was spent at the Center, and the evening we went to the park. The “Meet America” day gave our members had a Great opportunity to chat, eat, and play with the Americans and to learn about their lifestyles, cultures, and tradition.

After the visitors left, our members told us how they never imagined that they would meet foreigners who would be so friendly towards them and would answer all questions they had about the USA .

Answering questions at the Center
Answering questions at the Center
Games time at the park
Games time at the park
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Members of Global Life Hub get a break from Indian spiciness

Food is what everyone enjoys. Thus among many interesting events held at the Global Life Hub in Hyderabad was a baking session conducted by an American team. The main purpose of the session was to expose our members to a foreign culture and its traditions and food habits so that they will be well prepared to face any ethnic group or people in future. I remember someone saying to me “You can only understand other cultures by having their food”. And what is very difficult here is to find real American food cooked by a real American, but Global Life Hub made this possible last week.

The session started with the making of hot chocolate with spongy marshmallows. And this was our first time seeing marshmallows, which are not found here normally. Our next food was puppy chow, a tasty cereal-and-chocolate-based sweet snack that all our members enjoyed. The third item was delicious cookies that members were able to take home.

The session ended with singing and sharing about how Christmas is celebrated in American homes.

This is what you do with . . . .
Puppy Chow
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Goducate center in India takes off

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.

Listening to speaker from a multinational corporation talking about life in the corporate world
At a session by the American team
Group activity practising English

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.