What Gives You Hope: Reflections from a Year with ACIC
- Amelia Dinh
- 16 hours ago
- 3 min read
It is one thing to read about international cooperation, and another to take part in it. Over the past year, the Atlantic Council for International Cooperation (ACIC) helped close that gap for me. Through a symposium, youth gatherings, community events, and a summer internship, ideas I had only studied about began to take shape in practice. The lesson I learnt running through all of it is that development grows out of partnerships, collaborative dialogue, and local agency. Much of that cooperation work also happens closer to home than most people expect. For someone just stepping out of school, that has been the most useful lesson of all.
My first encounter with ACIC came at a challenging time for the sector. The 2025 symposium, From Aid to Action, was held just as major donors pulled back on overseas aid and many organizations were left wondering how to carry on. ACIC opened space for that uncertainty, bringing practitioners together to speak about what should come next. Listening to people who had spent decades in this work changed how I understood what I had studied. Those discussions have stayed with me ever since.
Some of the most valuable experience came from working alongside other young people. As one of the youth leaders at the Global Citizenship Youth Conference, I joined a weekend retreat that brought together young people from all four Atlantic provinces to lead and participate in discussions on anti-racism, reconciliation, and equity work, and to make global issues feel more local. The Re-imagining Development event in February opened that conversation wider, drawing community organizers from across the region to think through questions that shift with the news each week. Many of the connections established there are still part of my network today, and we continue to reach out to one another for professional development.
A different kind of lesson for me came from learning how to host difficult conversations. Through the Safer Spaces Dialogue Advisory Committee, members and youth came together to look at how colonialism, racism, and unequal power still shape global work. I helped co-host that series alongside other members, a local MLA, and fellow youth. There, I learned to facilitate in real time, using the World Café method to draw out many voices and let a shared understanding emerge. Hosting well turned out to be its own form of equity work, and it is something I keep returning to when working with other community members and volunteers.
Two events I participated with ACIC this past winter also brought the conversation about solidarity and equity out into the wider community. The Youth Voices for Global Solidarity Panel, held during International Development Week 2026, grew out of a collaboration between ACIC and Dalhousie’s Office for Equity and Inclusion. The panel asked a simple question: what does global solidarity look like here in Atlantic Canada? The panel agreed on a shared belief that people across the region have real agency to make their own communities fairer, even when the broader landscape looked bleak. A few days earlier, I spent a morning at a Halifax farmers market, asking shoppers a similar question: what gives you hope? The answers ranged from a new school lunch program to a change in recycling rules. Almost anything, it turns out, links a person's daily life to something much larger.
However, the biggest learning opportunity I had came from working inside ACIC as a Member Outreach Associate. The role – centering community outreach, membership administration, and communications – offered me a close look at how an organization in the cooperation sector runs day to day. It also introduced me to a coalition of other groups doing this equity-based work across Atlantic Canada. Indeed, keeping that community connected takes lots of behind-the-scenes effort from ACIC front, and outreach is a big part of it. For an emerging professional, it has shaped how I think about the work I want to do next.
As I wrap up my internship, I leave with a bag full of new relationships and a far clearer sense of the field I am entering. ACIC is a local organization that keeps its eyes on the global stage while staying remarkably in tune with what its own community in Atlantic Canada is voicing. If I could leave you with one thing, it would be a small invitation. You already have more influence than you might realize, right where you are, and I hope you'll think about how you could use it to make your own community a fairer place.
