OUR HISTORY
Engage Globally was founded by Heather Heckel, PhD, while she was an Assistant Professor teaching sustainability at American University. In this role, Heather had the opportunity to travel with her students and to observe global education, conservation, and foreign aid in several countries. Unfortunately, she and her students often found that well-meaning visitors and international organizations created projects that had limited impact or did not last over time.
For example, in one of our partner villages, of approximately 1500 residents in rural Northern Ghana, there are eight broken aid projects donated by different organizations and governments. These projects, which include broken wells, never used toilets, a collapsed food storage facility, abandoned bee hives, and a never opened health clinic, can create public health risks and are unsightly and discouraging. Heather and her students often discussed how international engagement might become more effective and sustainable. During one trip, Heather met Walisu, a local community organizer in rural Northern Ghana. Walisu had organized a women’s group, local traditional leaders, and youth to form a community-based organization (CRI) with five villages. His innovative leadership and the community’s commitment to achieving their goals were impressive, but a lack of resources hindered their efforts, Building upon this inspirational visit and growing recognition of the potential of ‘engaging globally’, Heather collaborated with several alumni to establish Engage Globally to model a more sustainable, equitable, and collaborative approach to sustainable development. Engage began by collaborating with Walisu and local community leaders to support one classroom for 25 early childhood learners in rural Northern Ghana. Today, we support the education of over 550 children and youth in nine rural villages. We also engage in women's empowerment, vocational training, small business development, environmental education, tree planting, public health, and food security projects. Beyond our collaboration in Ghana, we support environmental education in collaboration with the Children's Eternal Rainforest in Costa Rica and provide online resources about sustainability. Thanks to our diverse community of partners, supporters, interns, board members, and volunteers, our organization continues to grow. |
OUR APPROACH
Engage Globally envisions sustainable development for all. We pursue this vision by collaborating with community-based organizations to support their goals. We believe that community-led projects can transform 'international aid' into an approach that is collaborative, effective, and both mutually educational and beneficial. Communities, through discussion with diverse stakeholders, are uniquely able to build upon cultural, social, and other local resources, to create projects that are relevant, meaningful, and sustainable over time. Additionally, community-led projects are able to adjust quickly to changing circumstances and to be resilient in the face of unexpected events or emergencies. Engage Globally contributes to these partnerships through capacity building, financial resources, and knowledge growth.
We believe that everyone can 'engage globally' and we seek to build a community of people who are interested in learning and making a difference together. To support mutual learning, we provide presentations and online resources to engage individuals and their communities in learning about global sustainable development and environmental conservation. As an organization, Engage seeks to be inclusive, to magnify the voices and experiences of underrepresented communities, and to role model sustainable organizational practices.
We believe that everyone can 'engage globally' and we seek to build a community of people who are interested in learning and making a difference together. To support mutual learning, we provide presentations and online resources to engage individuals and their communities in learning about global sustainable development and environmental conservation. As an organization, Engage seeks to be inclusive, to magnify the voices and experiences of underrepresented communities, and to role model sustainable organizational practices.
OUR CORE VALUES
- Empowering communities to choose, design, and implement programs to pursue their sustainable development goals.
- Amplifying the voices of people and communities who live on the front lines of under-development, climate change, and declining biodiversity.
- Promoting equality of opportunity, equitable sharing of resources, and inclusive diversity throughout all of our work.
- Pursuing the well-being of both people and nature.
- Engaging our supporters, partners, program participants, and others in mutual learning and collaborative action towards sustainable development.
- Emphasizing education, youth empowerment, and gender equity as core drivers of global progress.
Our Plans and goals

As our organization has grown and our partners' impacts have expanded, we have been approached by several new village communities requesting to join our programs. This has created opportunities for scaling up our work, while continuing to be mindful of resilience in the face of food security and climate challenges. If resources were available, some of our current priorities include:
We welcome suggestions and support for these new efforts and hope you will learn more by reading our strategic plan.
- Growing the women's agriculture program to include women from all nine of our partner villages and to provide a shared tractor for all of the farmers in the program to use.
- Adding three new classes of early childhood learners to our recently opened Tahama Learning Center.
- Reconstructing our oldest community learning center which was severely damaged by flooding in June 2023.
- Building and opening a new learning center in a more rural neighboring village that lacks access to primary education.
- Establishing a vocational training center to provide literacy education and vocational training to youth ages 12 to 15 who were never able to attend school.
- Expanding our tree planting and environmental education programs to include more local culture and arts and youth empowerment projects.
We welcome suggestions and support for these new efforts and hope you will learn more by reading our strategic plan.