WACE Global Challenge Program Participation Report

I would like to report on the WACE Global Challenge, which I had the opportunity to participate in. The Global Challenge, organized by WACE, an international organization promoting cooperative education, brings together students from around the world to remotely discuss and propose solutions to challenges related to the SDGs faced by companies and others.

The session I participated in took place from the end of January to late-February this year, with 46 students from around the world divided into 7 teams to tackle the challenges. The main participating universities included the University of Guelph (Canada), the University of Limerick (Ireland), Suranaree University of Technology (Thailand), and Drexel University (USA).

During our initial meeting, we were presented with the following challenge from a company called Earth Changer: "How can we effectively promote our sustainable travel and tourism activities on websites and social media?" Our team, composed of students from different organizations, started our activities under the name "Sustainabler." Our main task involved working closely with the company to propose better solutions to the challenges they faced.

On February 22nd, we made our final presentation as a team. Our proposal focused on actively engaging on Facebook and Instagram to achieve a high engagement rate in sustainable tourism marketing on social media. We received high praise from the client company, who acknowledged that effective use of social media could attract the interest of not only the younger generation but also a wider audience.

Through this project, I contributed to the team by actively listening to my team members' opinions and incorporating them into discussions. I also learned the importance of dividing research tasks among team members to efficiently make progress with the project. Participating in this program enabled us to achieve the project's objectives across different cultures.

In this program, I acquired valuable skills and experienced developmental business dialogues with clients. Furthermore, since discussions were conducted in English, a certain level of English conversation skills was necessary. However, I felt that through team discussions, I was able to improve my practical English and presentation skills. If given the opportunity, I would recommend this program to others.