by Riley Dolman, University of Western Australia
Travelling from different parts of the world we all came together to work on the same goal of improving the way, at least within our own universities, of tackling global issues through active citizenship. I had many take away messages from the week, the first being how beautiful Durham as a town and university is. It was a perfect location for a forum, being comfortable and homely. We enjoyed presentations from all the universities that gave me great insight into the way that the other Matariki Universities were working with their students to improve their own communities.
What I found quite interesting was the way in which each of the universities and within that the peoples defined what global citizenship was. This largely contributed to the extensive discussions that we had around what programs we all had and how they were working on improving the situations. I got a large benefits from the informal conversations as this allowed us to really dive into each others programs. I have gained lots of new information that I have to present back to my university and improve the ways we contribute to the idea of Global Citizenship.
We had some really interesting additional programs, my favourite being the tour of the Cathedral of Durham. These activities really added to the value of the forum for me.
I am very much looking forward to playing host to the forum at UWA in 2020.
