The mission of the Global Livingston Institute is to educate students and community leaders on innovative approaches to international development and empower awareness, collaboration, conversations and personal growth. 

Our goal at the GLI is to individualize your experiences and make your time in Uganda and Rwanda transformational and life changing! We want you to build your outcomes not before you leave but based on your experiences when you are there. Alongside our passion for education, we believe that job creation is what is going to move people out of poverty and into sustainable living conditions in East Africa. That is why we have aligned our organization with social impact initiatives in the region.

The GSFP is an amalgamation of our immersion trips, academic summits and student-led research internships, and is fully virtual! Join us for a five-week intensive and rigorous academic program for students, recent graduates and professionals.

Each year, we are fortunate to have over 300 students and community leaders join us in East Africa for a series of immersion experiences focused on re-thinking the way our world approaches community development.

We offer internship opportunities year-round in a limited capacity based on our organization’s needs. We are very intentional about aligning interns with supervisors that request intern support, or setting students up for success on independent research projects. GLI interns join the team either in the US or East Africa, and range from both in-person and remote positions!

Since 2014, GLI has hosted free concerts in East Africa centered around culture sharing, public health, and economic development. Tens of thousands of people have attended the shows and more than 16,000 have received a free HIV test, among other health services.

Each June since 2013, more than 30 influential women from the United States and East Africa have come together for a three-day conference at the Entusi Resort and Retreat Center to foster women’s empowerment, collaborative thinking, dialogue, and culture sharing.

GLI’s Annual Youth Summit brings together young people from across the US and East Africa to cultivate leadership skills through critical dialogues, guest speakers, and facilitated group exercises. In the true spirit of GLI’s mission to listen, think, and then act, after the program, each student is asked to identify an issue in their home community for which these leadership skills can be used to take action and impact lasting change.

Plastic packaging accounts for nearly half of all plastic waste globally, yet in East Africa, there is little to no organized recycling efforts. Alongside our partner Coca-Cola, we developed a recycling center to help change the way society uses and disposes of plastics. 

The model farm is an example of everything that we can grow in the region and exemplifies more efficient methods of farming that are lacking from the region. It will serve as an example for the region as to what resources they could use and how it could improve their efficiency and overall production.

Since 2016, GLI has been involved with various efforts related to Down syndrome in Uganda. GLI has developed a great partnership with the U.S. Global Down Syndrome Foundation as well as several partners in Uganda who are involved in services targeted towards differently-abled populations in the region.