This month, as students from Colorado and Florida gathered for a rooftop barbecue in Kampala, Uganda, with African leaders to build global partnerships, collaborations and relationships, someone very powerful tried to tear them down.

MBA students in the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver, find that the skills they learn have uses outside the classroom. In fact, they’re equipped with the tools and knowledge they need to make an impact in communities around the world.

Some 8,000 miles away from the University of Denver campus, Ugandans are receiving the training they need to enter the workforce and improve their quality of life. The initiative — known as the Hospitality In-Service Training Program — is a partnership featuring DU, the Global Livingston Institute (GLI) and Staffable.

For the last 7 years, the Global Livingston Institute has opened eyes and started conversations both here in Colorado and 8,500+ miles away in Uganda (East Africa).

Ryan Grundy, who is associate director of the Global Livingston Institute, adds Rwandan President Paul Kagame welcomed the two recent graduates of a Denver School of Science and Technology campus, the park’s manager and others to his home and farm on Sunday.

One of the first, 2005 Livingston Fellow Jamie Van Leeuwen, now senior adviser to Gov. John Hickenlooper, used his grant to visit Uganda and Rwanda, where after seeing firsthand the need for people “to do more listening and thinking before acting,” he created the Global Livingston Institute.