CASC Abroad
While CASC today focuses most of its work on amplifying student voices and leaders in California, it has participated in youth development programs around the world.
Read on for an overview of our global activities over the decades.
CASC Around the World
- 1992: CASC staffs and participates in Global Youth Summit at Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Kirk Birdstrom envisioned gathering all environmentally-minded people in one place, leading to the creation of the Rio Summit. Twenty-eight countries were present, with all facilitators coming from California.
- 2001: CASC trainers conduct programs in South Africa for adults working to reduce the spread of AIDS.
- 2003: AYL and CASC conduct training for youth facilitators in Amori, Japan.
- 2012-13: CASC conducts training for 40 Pakistani and English college students at the University of Gujrat in Pakistan. In an effort to create a widespread leadership development program in Pakistan, CASC was invited to run a camp in Lahore in partnership with UK’s Global Youth Leaders. This was followed by a program in England when Pakistan became too dangerous.
- 2013: CASC hosts its first Chinese delegation in California.
- 2014: CASC staffs the first student leadership training conference in Beijing, China.
- 2017: CASC hosts a program at the world’s largest children’s cancer hospital in Egypt.
- 2023: CASC conducts training for educators in Yerevan to improve Student Councils across the country of Armenia.
CASC in Russia
In the 1980s and 90s, CASC worked closely with youth in the Soviet Union and Russia to develop student leadership and philanthropy in the region, and to strengthen ties between the countries’ youth.
Beginning in 1987, CASC students worked with Russian and Finnish counterparts to develop an Agenda for the 21st Century. Among other topics, the agenda called for collaboration between the two youth populations and for nuclear disarmament.
CASC called students to action through its newsletter and an article published in a Russian youth newspaper, collecting letters and eventually video testimony regarding nuclear disarmament.
Youth directly addressed President Ronald Reagan and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, and would go on to meet both Reagan and Gorbachev in person to present their work.
Included in Agenda 21 was a proposal for a youth exchange program between the Soviet Union and United States, as youth could not leave the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. This proposal was accepted, and Soviet students went on to participate in state-funded leadership development training in the US.
In 1990, members of CASC and their Russian counterparts served as facilitators at the first Student Leadership Conference in Moscow.
In 1992, CASC supported the development of The Association of Young Leaders (AYL), the third non-profit organization formed in Russia (after the Soviet Union).
In 2021 CASC conducted two virtual Global Youth Leadership Summits, bringing youth together from Russia and the U.S. to co-create and implement projects to address social issues that unite students across the two countries.
“We think we have much in common. We, as all children of the world, want to live in peace and friendship. And we can do much for the improvement of relation [sic] between our two countries.”
Read about our work at home
Most modern CASC work is in California’s education spaces. Read about what our students are doing to make their voices heard.
