GLI Club: All You Need Is Love

All you need is love.

The Global Leaders Initiative Club works to teach people to be accepting, to simply love one another and appreciate the beautiful uniqueness that resides in each one of us. To bring the students of FHC back to the basics… its only goal being to teach people to abstain from viewing the world through tinted glasses, and instead view it in its entirety and be able to appreciate the amalgam of colors that lives within it.

“Love is one of the most powerful forces on the Earth,” said advisor Vicky Felton. “This club really works to teach people the value of it and the idea that everyone has a struggle. The quiet kid in the back of the class could be working 3 part time jobs to provide for her family and the boy who always seems to be smiling could be dealing with his parents getting divorced. No one can tell the struggle that one another is going through… GLI Club acknowledges this fact and just simply works on spreading love regardless of what one another is going through.”

The GLI Club, meeting the first Tuesday of each month in the lecture hall, is a club that doesn’t follow a specific agenda. Instead, after the final bell of the day, you’ll witness a flock of about 15 kids filing into the dimly-lit room to simply talk. The club is based off of discussion…simply conversing about ways to make everyone feel accepted.

“Cliques. Gossiping. Drama,” GLI president Erika Iwatsu said. “Those are all negative terms associated with high school. The Global Leaders Initiative Club works to abandon all these stereotypes. You go to school for 7 hours a day for 5 days a week… I think it’s important that everyone feels like they belong.”

The club is unique in the sense that, while they strive towards improving the culture within the walls of FHC, they also work towards promoting acceptance and unity within the district. On November 9th, a group of about 40 teachers and students gathered in the FAC to be brought back to the basics; they learned how to be a little more human in a world that is otherwise cruel and cold. Simply put, the amalgam of Global Leaders Initiative students and leaders learned how to be a little more compassionate, be a little more accepting, and to love a little harder.

Seated around a small and rather inviting circular table, both teachers and students from a broad spectrum of schools across the district, allowed themselves to be vulnerable for the few hours at the convention and invited the other participants into their haunting past and their enriching history. The purpose of the training program was to break down the social and cultural barriers in order to understand the concept of Ubuntu: I am because we are, or in relationship to the district, Forest Hills is a highly esteemed district because of the people, teachers, and parents involved, not because of the divisions we have created within the district and the preconceived stereotypes pertaining to each high school in the district.

By the end of the convention, everyone walked out of the building with tear stains running down their face because it was in that moment that they realized something had to be done. The program had allowed them a safe place for those few designated hours, a place to break away from all the preconceived images of what you should be and to be who you truly were, because for those few hours, everyone was accepted for exactly who they were.

“I realized something had to change,” Iwatsu said, in regards to the current school dynamic.

“The Global Leaders training program that I attended helped me realize that this change was essential. In order for Forest Hills to grow as both a school and a community, something had to be done.”

And while Iwatsu understands that the GLI club is not going to entirely fix the sense of division that may exist within the walls of the school and spread acceptance., she does understand that anything helps in the name of “unity.” Some feats that the club have accomplished during their reign at FHC include numerous fundraisers for women’s equality movements, the annual diversity fair, and educating the school about Martin Lr. Kings legacy through the use of thought-provoking videos and conversations.

“We want people to know that is okay to talk,” Iwatsu remarked. “It is okay to have conversations about touchy subjects about the issues regarding both equality and unity. We, as a club, have a voice and GLI allows us to be heard.”

According to superintendent Dan Behm, we, as people naturally learn to exclude, fear, and distrust others- especially those whom we do not know or understand. GLI works to help many of us unlearn these destructive traits that we have seemed to pick up in the tainted society that we call home.

“A fundamental aspect to learning in a communal setting like a school is that we must feel seen, understood, and part of that community,” Behm said. “If we feel like an outsider, learning suffers.”