FeelGood & Semester at Sea

My family and friends have made me who I am today, but there are two things that have changed my life more than anything else; FeelGood and Semester At Sea (SAS). While the two of these things are completely unique in there own way, they are also so very similar. Both have a common goal and mission, to transform students into more responsible global citizens and to create a global partnership. Naturally, I wanted to bring these two things closer together.

While on SAS I made so many close relationships with all sorts of people; students, teachers, staff, and more. Six new FeelGood chapters were started by SAS friends of mine. It is a match made in heaven. SAS instills a sense of global community in students and FeelGood provides an outlet for partnering with this community.

One of my closest friends from SAS ended up joining their board. He has always had a close relationship with the president of SAS so I sent him a proposal last summer to share with the president, which he did. In the proposal, I suggested a long term partnership between the two organizations which would allow me or another FeelGood representative to attend each SAS voyage for a few days to speak to all the students about FeelGood and how to get involved. These students could then go back to their respective colleges and start their own feelgood chapters. Each voyage has roughly 100-200 universities represented!

The response back from the proposal was great. They wanted to meet me and hear more about FeelGood so I attended the SAS alumni reunion voyage this past January. Besides the trip being INCREDIBLY fun and entertaining, I met some great new contacts from SAS. These contacts included, staff, board members, and the president himself! They asked me to give a formal presentation which lasted a whole hour. I felt really good about the presentation which was well attended. Everyone seemed really into it and saw clearly the partnership that could be formed.

So it has been a few months since my return from the SAS alumni reunion voyage. I am still in follow up with many of the contacts I made. As of now we are still working on solidifying a proposal, but we have made some strides in the right direction. One of the teachers on SAS is going to include my presentation I gave on the reunion voyage in one of his classes. Also, we are working on a 20 minute video which will be shown to ALL the students on SAS towards the end of their voyage to show them how to stay involved post SAS. We have made some good progress and are looking to partner even more.

I am hopeful that SAS and FeelGood can work together to make a world of difference.

Looking forward to updating you all again soon! :)

-Jason