Part of our mission at Language of Liberty Institute is "To prepare individuals to develop the civil institutions of free societies..."  Although we cannot easily quantify our influence, we know the path to freedom is a journey that engages students at all points and all levels of experience. Each camp challenges a different and exciting mixture of students to develop their freedom tools and to begin to take real action in the cause of liberty.

 

In this issue we are proud to introduce you to three freedom fighters with whom we are working to spread freedom to new areas. 

 

Marcel van Hattem comes from Porto Alegre, Brazil.  Currently, he pursues his Masters in Political Science at the University of Leiden, Netherlands, and interns at the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the Netherlands at the Hague. Astrid and Glenn met Marcel last November, we were immediately impressed with his intense energy and desire to spread liberty in Brazil. Marcel (with his great team) organized our first Liberty English Camp in South America. It was our most successful so far, in terms of size and finances and promise of future collaboration. You can read about it in his article.

 

Pavel Koktyshev comes from Karaganda, Kazakhstan and now lives in Almaty. He recently founded the Institute for Development and Economic Affairs (IDEA), inspired by our friends at CAFMI in Bishkek, where we held a Liberty English Camp in 2009. Pavel's project provides yet another good example of the power of our ideas and of your financial support in spreading those ideas. No doubt Pavel and his team, along with CAFMI, will have a wide influence throughout central Asia. You can read Pavel's story below.

  

David Khosroshvili lives in Tbilisi, Georgia where he stays busy teaching at the Free University of Georgia, starting new businesses, and running the Club of Liberty, which he recently founded with his friend Ilia Meshvildishvili (we will tell you more about Ilia in our next issue).  Leveraging the students' desire to practice speaking English, David and his team tweaked our typical camp program to emphasize the development of persuasive communication skills. Read how that turned out below. 

  

Also in this issue, we unveil a new membership program, developed by Andy Eyschen, LLI co-founder and director. The Free Enterprise Club will connect aspiring entrepreneurs, collaborators and investors to create prosperity and freedom by combining our network power to start new businesses.

 

We have a busy summer ahead, and this will be our biggest year yet. But we need your help now to fully fund these plans. We know from our experience with 23 camps in 15 countries that they are fertile ground for sprouting new leaders for liberty, but we cannot achieve this on our own. Please consider an immediate contribution of $500 to help fund a repeat camp in Mozambique in August, a second camp in Poland in September, and a new camp in Serbia in September. Anything you can give now will ensure the success of these camps this year, inspiring more freedom fighters like Marcel, Pavel, and David.

 

Thank you!

 

In Liberty,  

 

Glenn and the LLI team

 

 

My name is Pavel Koktyshev and I am 21 years old. I have been very active with think tanks in Kazakhstan since high school. When I moved to Almaty 5 years ago, I also become involved in politics.

 

The people of Kazakhstan need more freedom (including me!) But the main problem here is the old communist ideology of big government. The majority of our citizens can't even imagine that Kazakhstan could develop without it. I believe differently.

 

I was very motivated by meeting Mirsuljan Namazaliev (CAFMI, Bishkek) along with Tom Palmer (Atlas Network, USA) and Krassen Stanchev (IME, Bulgaria) at a public lecture in 2008 in Almaty. I began reading books and articles on inliberty.ru  and other websites. In 2011, I went to Bishkek to meet Tom Palmer again and there I decided to establish my own think-tank, Institute for Development and Economic Affairs (IDEA). 

 

Registering the NGO in Kazakhstan was not so simple. But during the process, we still worked on educational projects, organizing seminars and workshops with graduate students, other NGOs, and academia. I believe that such events help us find partners, build networks and develop our research dimension. On the topic of entrepreneurship we have more than 10 partner organizations and in total about 20.

 

One of our first and most important projects was Liberty English Camp with Language of Liberty Institute and our good friends Glenn, Andy and David Hutzelman earlier this year. They believed in us from the start and with full enthusiasm, helping us to build a program and inspiring us to take real action to spread liberty.

 

In spite of a last-minute change of venue, our camp was a great success. For many participants, this camp was their first experience with the philosophy of liberty. After this great introduction, we have kept our students involved with us through other educational programs. I hope next year we will have an even better experience with our old friends from LLI. 

Never before was there such a big interest in liberty from Georgian students.

 

Our Liberty English Camp gathered over 80 students from different universities and with different backgrounds. 80 English speaking students, it seemed to be a bit surprising to our foreign colleagues. But yes, we can proudly say that during the past 8 years a lot has changed in Georgia, along with a lot of liberal reforms. Nowadays, English has become a must for each person if he wants to find a good job. 

 

We capitalized on this desire for English proficiency by organizing the camp activities around team debates, organized by Ilia Meshvildishvili and our colleagues at Club of Liberty. The debates played a crucial role in increasing interaction among participants and providing a thorough, practical examination of liberal ideas. 

 

Student debates appear to be a unique feature of LLI camps. This made a huge impact on participants, fostering a better understanding of classical liberalism than mere lectures. Even during the breaks, participants were debating among themselves and discussing the topics that were presented and the myths and old assumptions that were exposed.

 

To sum up, the camp had a very positive impact on the perception of each participant. A majority of students are now very active in all of our Club of Liberty events and have a great desire to participate in future liberty conferences and camps.

 

We'd like to take moment here to acknowledge the generous support of Linda Whetstone.  Linda and her team at Network for a Free Society produce the CD "Ideas for a Free Society" which is an indexed library of over 100 essays, books, and articles on free market economics and classical liberal philosophy.  Thanks to Linda, we give a CD to each student at all our camps. It is a valuable gift of information, for which we and our students are ever grateful.

LLI Here and There

 

Astrid, Glenn and David Hutzelman were all at the Atlas Experience in Colorado Springs  

April 24 - 26. 

 

Glenn and Andy are now on their way to our 6th annual Slovakia Liberty Camp hosted by our friend Radovan Ďurana from INESS followed by our first of two Poland camps, this one hosted by Jacek Spendel at Globalization Institute (5th year). 

 

Upcoming Camps

Summer is upon us, and that means it is time for our two longest running camps: 

 

 Slovakia (June 24-30) 

Poland (July 2 - 7) 

 

We also have some exciting news- we have been invited back for a second event in  

 

Mozambique 2 (Aug 4-6)

 

and a second camp in Poland with PAFERE

 

 Poland 2 (Sept 1-7) 

 

and a brand new camp

in Serbia with LIBEK

 

Serbia (Sept 25 -Oct 1) 

 

The Language of Liberty Institute is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. Please consider donating today!