TCU’s Discovering Global Citizenship Initiative brought in a teenager this semester to discuss the need for gender equality worldwide. Chloe Reynaldo, 16, is a youth and gender rights activist from the Philippines. She spent last week at TCU engaging in classes and discussion with students, advocating for gender equality. She was formally recognized as the 2016 Global Innovator at a luncheon and she also spoke at the FWISD Newcomer Academy on last Friday. “When you’re from a third-world country such as mine, a lot of the issues in our country come from poverty,” said Reynaldo. “A lot of the gender equality issues come from poverty, such as the girls not being able to go to school or the girls being forced to stay home and take care of their siblings.” Reynaldo, who was accompanied by her mother, said traveling to different places around the world made her realize how different life is in the Philippines compared to the United States. Discovering Global Citizenship brings one individual to campus each semester for multi-disciplinary curricular and co-curricular student engagement activities with the innovator, in addition to a sustainable project designed to further the innovator’s work in their home country. Reynaldo said she became an activist when she was 14 after she attended a seminar in her province. Her school asked a few representatives to go and she said they saw potential in her at the seminar. She said she tries to talk about the challenges she faces being a young activist. “The challenges would be the lack of authority you might have as a youth, especially when you’re talking to adults and then they’re thinking ‘what authority or credibility do you have to be speaking on such subjects’,” Reynaldo said. “Even when I’m talking to my peers since I’m not an adult they won’t really listen to me unless I really prove that I know what I’m talking about.” Reynaldo was awarded a competitive grant organized by graphic design instructor Jan Marie Ballard. Ballard said Reynaldo immediately stood out from the other applicants. “She was so young and so well-spoken. I knew instantly she was the one we were looking for,” Ballard said. “I contacted the United Nations to make sure she could travel here fine.” Reynaldo judged an art exhibit the graphic design department put together. It featured 22 projects by female students in the Professional Recognition for Graphic Designers class.
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Teenage Global Innovator visits TCU for work on gender equality
Published Oct 7, 2016
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