When introduced to Jackie and Mike Bezos some 20 years ago, Global Nomads Group made a compelling and lasting impression. The group’s pioneering efforts to harness then-emerging technology to connect youth in vastly different parts of the world sparked a transformational investment and a powerful partnership.
The Bezos Family Foundation, which was just starting up at the time, made its very first grant to Global Nomads Group and has been a lead partner ever since. This fall, the Foundation renewed its commitment with a $1.5M grant.
"Global Nomads Group is deeply committed to its vision of fostering cross-cultural dialogue, while demonstrating a nimbleness to adapt to new learnings on how to best support the growth of young people worldwide. They're consistently tuned into young people's realities — amid unprecedented shifts in the global context. The Bezos Family Foundation wants to ensure that the impact of this work endures."
This new grant will allow Global Nomads to meet today’s youth where they are – physically, academically, emotionally and socially. It will fund program innovation and expansion that responds to young people’s eagerness to define their own identities, to be accepted and respected by their peers, and to engage with the social issues that most directly affect them and their communities.
Global Nomads programs draw on the science of learning and brain development to use storytelling to build empathy, awareness, and agency. This closely aligns with the Bezos Family Foundation’s goal of translating the latest research into practice to bring about meaningful experiences and measurable outcomes for children and adolescents growing up in a rapidly changing world.
This grant will support program partnerships aimed at reaching marginalized youth who are too often overlooked or excluded from cross-national and cross-cultural opportunities – such as those in rural communities, immigrants and refugees, students with disabilities, and those attending under-resourced schools.
Throughout the years, The Bezos Family Foundation’s support of Global Nomads has been extraordinary in its generosity and its synergy. This powerful partnership hasn’t just sustained Global Nomads’ work over time but it has challenged the organization to continuously innovate, to grow responsibly, and to contribute to the knowledge base and capacity strengthening of the field of youth development overall.
