2016-10-28

By Ana Gomez Salcido

World leaders got together to help catalyze social change and combat human trafficking in San Diego through the second annual Global Empowerment Summit held by UC San Diego jointly with the nonprofit Alliance 4 Empowerment on Saturday, October 22.

“The essence of the summit is to be the source of change and to make San Diego the most compassionate city in the United States,” said Naila Chowdhury, who recently became UC San Diego’s first director of Social Impact and Innovation. “We all want to come together with solutions of social, economic, and empowerment of  disadvantaged women in City Heights and all over San Diego.”

Chowdhury founded Alliance 4 Empowerment to empower underserved people with the universal opportunity to live with dignity, self-respect, and love in the San Diego region and beyond.

Around 300 people joined Chowdhury at the event that was held free of charge at the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine.

“The Global Empowerment Summit is really an expression of UC San Diego’s obligation to be connected with our local community and our world,” said UCSD Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Becky Petitt. “We are an institution focused on teaching, research, and service so this is an opportunity to really connect the knowledge production that happens in the university and within our surrounding community to bring those to groups together to think about how we can really make a difference and transform the world.”

The summit explored themes including the power of collaboration, social impact, global connection, human triumph, recognition, and the power of collective minds. The lineup of 30 speakers at the event included politicians like Congresswoman Susan Davis and Speaker Emeritus of the California State Assembly Toni Atkins as  the keynote speaker. Representatives of international development institutions included UN Women’s Economic Empowerment Chief Meg Jones, and Maya Brahmam, Senior Communications Officer at the World Bank.

“The objective is to create connections, and to bring together those of us who are wanting to do good and are wanting to serve the public good,” Petitt added. “Is to bring economic opportunities to those who have been disenfranchised; that’s why we included vendors here who by various reasons have become unbankable. I really don’t like that word but it means that they don’t have the means to get an official loan from a bank.”

Alliance 4 Empowerment’s primary focus is building financially inclusive communities by helping hard-working individuals.

“We believe in providing a hand-up instead of a hand-out,” said summit co-chair Amanda Caniglia. “Rather than relying on charity, the power of small sustainable credit loans allows hard-working women and youth to thrive by developing their existing skills into profitable, self-sustaining small businesses in a nurturing, loving and supportive environment.”

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