The First Steps
The idea of Global-In Fellowship was born in 2011, after two of its founders, Hedda Nielsen and Jonas Tylewski represented their countries at the “Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Fellowship”, a US State Department youth program at Wake Forest University, North Carolina, USA which gathers up to 60 students aged 16-19 from the US, Europe and Eurasia every year. Inspired by the organizers’ dedication to educate about society, politics and international relations and by the community of peers, they decided to try to extend the opportunity to more people to meet and connect with other young leaders – taking the first steps towards what is “Global-In Fellowship”
2013 Hedda and Jonas found International Projects e.V. and Fabian Angeloni joins as the third director – and the first concept of GIF takes shape with a first-draft outlined on a train between Germany and Denmark – setting the international course right from the start.
2014 The first edition of Global-In Fellowship, funded by the US State Department through the US Embassy Berlin and Stockholm and by the European Commission’s Erasmus+ program, takes place in Berlin, Germany. For three challenging weeks, the program brought together around 50 youth leaders from 11 countries in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. The program was divided into a ‘one-theme-one-week’-structure: encompassing workshops, a Model United Nations as well as a post-natural disaster simulation, with an intensive evening program with rhetoric and social skills trainings – to provide as holistic of a learning experience as possible.
2015, 2016, 2017 Fine-tuning and furthering their program, the team welcomed young leaders to Berlin and to the Global-In Fellowship community on a yearly basis the following three years. To achieve this, a dedicated team of young mentors and co-organizers where recruited – many of which were BFTF and GIF alumni themselves.
Global-In Fellowship grew out of the aim of bringing young people across the world together, to inspire innovative ideas in the areas of politics, diplomacy and social activism. Over the years, the program has grown from small to big; with over 250 Alumni from more than 14 countries, many of them creating their own projects, impacting social change and further connecting the world around them.
