Two clubs. Two ways. Same concept.

Global Leadership and Global Voice, clubs at the high school, strive to educate the community on both local and global issues. Meeting during Z-block, Global Leadership focuses their attention on activism, whereas Global Voice, which meets during X-block, focuses on spreading information through writing articles.

In previous years, Global Leadership mainly discussed a variety of concerns, but this year the club shifted its attention to group projects focused on advocacy within the community. Through these projects, club members aim to educate themselves on how to improve the community through learning about past and current issues.

Junior Dan Hernan, student leader of Global Leadership, said one of their current projects recognizes and addresses racial disparities within the high school.

“We’re working on a survey for qualitative data to figure out how students of color are impacted by the school system and how they are being either positively or negatively affected by underlying racial disparities,” Hernan said.

Meanwhile, senior Brian Ly, Editor-in-Chief of Global Voice, said the online newspaper focuses on educating community members through sharing interviews with different experts from around the world.

By welcoming professionals into their work, Ly said the club can deliver properly researched and unbiased information to the community. In the 2020-21 school year, the club highlighted the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on different communities across the globe.

According to Ly, Global Voice also provides a platform for him to confer with other club members on current affairs and brainstorm ideas for their reporting.

“It’s a space to just share your thoughts about these issues, and it’s pretty much a discussion space,” Ly said.

Sophomore Siena West, member of Global Voice, said she has acquired a lot of knowledge through participating in the club.

“I am able to learn about issues from professionals and gain more insight into global issues,” West said.

The two clubs, Global Leadership and Global Voice, are planning to merge. This process will allow students in both clubs to continue their work on community and global activism while giving them the opportunity to experience both clubs’ styles of learning.

“They’re really related in topic but different in content,” Hernan said.

The goal of this merger between the two clubs is to give club members more opportunities to get involved. The merger will provide more meeting times where they can experience both learning from professional guest speakers and collaborating on group projects on community and both past and present global issues.

“By merging both club times, there’s an opportunity for students who want to reinforce either the weekly guest speaker discussion part of it during X-block or the project based during Z-block,” Hernan said.