Virtual Project Arizona - Week 1 - My Experience

On the weekend of January 23rd and 24th, I had the first week of the Virtual Project Arizona. The program is officially described in the following manner: "Project Arizona is a semester-long program for young, outstanding leaders of global freedom change. In Phoenix, these international talents attend meaningful internships, academic seminar at Arizona State University (ASU), where they experience wide-ranging and valuable networking. They gain a thorough understanding of the ideas of liberty and how to implement them when they return to their communities." This year, due to COVID-19 and travel bans, the program is being held online. 

The first weekend was really good and well planned, we have 2 sessions each day of one hour and a half each with a thirty-minute break between them, which I think is really well spaced and good to keep attention and focus. The participants are from several different areas of the world, including Sri Lanka, India, Rwanda, Brazil, Peru, Nigeria, and Georgia.

About my participation: I didn't hear about the program until about 2 or 3 days before the deadline and considering that there were many options for internships in law firms (and considering that I am in law school), I decided to apply. When I was invited to the interview, I made sure to first understand better what the program was all about and it is very much related to the libertarian movement. 

That actually made me question whether I had any political orientation clearly that I could really say that I agreed with or even if there was a "side" I was more aligned with, that triggered me to want to best understand the movement, and Project Arizona has surely shown to be a great opportunity. After the interviews, we had a couple of weeks to reach out to different people and organizations to fundraise. Finally, the results were out and I was selected.

Our first lecture, on Saturday, was about Laissez-Faire society and in that session, I learned more about the historical background of the movement and some of the main authors and motivations for the libertarian movement. Disclaimer: I am not 100% sure if it is correct to call it a movement, I will do it just for descriptive purposes.

Saturday afternoon the session was on leadership and I really enjoyed it, I mean, the topic is already something I am really passionate about, and having the chance to talk with an NGO CEO and Founder was just incredible. She shared with us about her passion for everything she has been doing and insightful ideas on using your education, network, and work experience to build things and make things work out for a cause.

On Sunday, in the morning, our session was on "Writing like a pro" and we had some training about essay writing, which was lovely and incredible. A sweet retired professor was leading the workshop and she guided us through the path of writing an essay - that was especially cool because I am studying writing and reading techniques for my TESOL Certificate. 

The afternoon session was about event promoting and other topics related to bringing ideas to the table and having meaningful conversations with society, we discussed different policies, the news regarding our countries and that was very interesting. The speaker also shared about his entrepreneurial journey with policy influencing; it was nice to see how he mentioned that he didn't want to go directly into politics, yet, he was willing to make a change in his community, and he did. He shared about some of his successful campaigns and that was great. He ended his session with a great quote: "When you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat." by Ronald Reagan.

I thought it was a very productive first week and I am enjoying the program very much. Thanks a lot for the organizers to make this possible.