One fall 2011 afternoon, while sitting/doodling/not sleeping in Prof. Roy’s “Global Poverty: Challenges and Hopes in the New Millennium” class, student Abby VanMuijen ditched her live-action note-taking for a moment and scribbled down a series of words instead. (Abby can spell, say wha?) The words were Abby’s response to Thomas Friedman’s “the world is flat” assertion. A year later, her words inspired the #GlobalPOV team, not to mention our logo:
And all this time, I thought the world was round.
The world is not round.
It has edges we can fall from and faces staring
in entirely different directions.
And I thought the world was huge, but it is not — it’s in our hands.
We can hold it, change it, turn it, shake it.
We can solve it, but not by sheer luck or chance.
We must be taught the way.”— Abby VanMuijen, U.C. Berkeley ’12
