BY REESE O’BRIEN
Reese O’Brien is a rising junior at William & Mary studying International Relations and Linguistics and the Events Director for the William & Mary Global Innovation Challenge (WMGIC).
If we are to build a sustainable future within the field of international development, youth engagement is more critical than ever. And yet, the international development community is not doing enough to effectively engage with undergraduate students. In doing so, the sector misses out on two vital opportunities: one, to nurture the next generation of international development professionals, and two, to benefit from the creativity and diverse perspectives of these young adults. The William & Mary Global Innovation Challenge (WMGIC) addresses this disconnect, working to build a bridge between the undergraduate and professional spheres.
WMGIC was established in 2016 by Sarah Martin and Samyu Jothishankar, two undergraduate students at William & Mary who wanted to provide a space for students to create innovative, sustainable solutions to global issues while challenging traditional methods of international aid. Through WMGIC, Martin and Jothishankar hoped to train the next generation of development practitioners into creative thinkers unafraid to push back against the status quo.
Six years later, WMGIC continues to pursue this goal, as is reflected in our new mission statement:
“WMGIC encourages and facilitates interdisciplinary collaboration and applied learning opportunities among students, policymakers, practitioners, and researchers by bringing innovative and sustainable perspectives to solve complex global issues.”
Through our annual case competition, we expose undergraduate students to international development problems. Students address these challenges in teams of three to five, in which they develop proposed solutions to the competition’s case topic within one of four streams: Governance, Social Entrepreneurship, Technology, Business Consulting. Since many universities do not offer an undergraduate major/minor in international development, WMGIC’s case competition plays an important role in introducing talented students to the work of international development professionals. These students come from a multitude of academic disciplines and may have been previously unaware that a career in the sector was even a possibility for them.
Over the past six years, WMGIC has built a global community of undergraduate students, international development professionals, and numerous stakeholders from several sectors. Since WMGIC’s inception, we have hosted over 550 student participants representing more than 60 universities from 11 countries across Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Thanks to the support of our 35 sponsors and partners within the William & Mary community and in the world of international development, student participants have had the opportunity to network with over 110 Judges and Mentors who are industry experts in their fields, further introducing them to possible career paths in international development.
But WMGIC is more than just a networking opportunity – our competition’s model of applied learning is what makes WMGIC a truly special experience for participants, and a great asset to the international development community at large. Because the student’s proposals are evaluated in part based on their creativity, WMGIC pushes participants to think outside the box, modify traditional methods, and develop novel solutions to disparities in development. Thus, students have the rare chance to apply what they have learned in the classroom to real-world situations while still adding their own unique perspectives. Examples of past innovations from the challenges include targeted implementation of water generation plants fueled by renewable energy in Darfur, using oyster reef building to address infrastructure loss in Kiribati, and creating a climate resilient community in Nigeria by converting plastic waste into bricks and roofing tiles to construct sustainable housing. The international development community can learn from the creativity of these proposals today, and benefit from the problem solving abilities of its future professionals tomorrow.
I experienced the value of WMGIC firsthand in 2021 when I competed as a freshman in the midst of the pandemic with two friends from a government class. The case that year was “Reducing Barriers to Regulation in the Kalimantan Palm Oil Industry,” which we approached within the Governance stream. In those 24 hours, I quickly learned that solving real-world problems requires the sort of multifaceted thinking that is not taught in classrooms. I had to balance issues of sustainability, environmental considerations, fiscal pragmatism, local context, creativity, and logistics, all within a short time frame. Moreover, simply researching facts about the case topic wasn’t enough – my team had to quickly analyze all available information and integrate it with feedback from mentors to create a viable solution that was still distinct from that of other teams. But at the end of the day, we created S.P.O.C (the Sustainable Palm Oil Cooperative), an initiative backed by the Ministry of Agriculture that would leverage the power of smallholders in Indonesia. Like many of our participants, I left the competition feeling inspired by the hard work and ingenuity of my peers, and more knowledgeable about the project development process. My story is just one example of how WMGIC develops students’ professional skills and encourages innovative thinking.
The broader development community needs youth-driven platforms like WMGIC to bridge the divide between undergraduate students and international development practitioners. If the last few years have taught us anything, it is that unpredictability is a constant, and resiliency is critical to addressing disparities. We need social change leaders to develop new methods of serving the global community. WMGIC plays a crucial role in fostering these skills within the next generation of development practitioners, infusing our model of “fast-thinking, nimble problem-solving, and crazy dreaming” into the development community.
Special thanks to Thomas (Huan-Cheng) Liu for editing this article, and for all the work he has done over the past four years to support and develop WMGIC as an organization.
Follow WMGIC on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Check out our website.
PHOTO CREDIT: "WMGIC II Presentation" by Caroline Polly