In what looks like a pretty impressive cross-sector, cross-continent, and cross-NYC collaboration,  18 leaders from NGOs in Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Estonia, Ethiopia, Israel, Latvia, Liberia, and Uruguay recently landed here for three weeks of “intensive training in nonprofit management and building civil societies.”

According to a press release from the 92nd Street Y, the Ford Motor Company International Fellowship of the 92nd Street Y brought ten men and eight women to New York this month. Participants were selected “from countries that have undergone conflict or upheaval but are stable enough to support at least the beginnings of a civil society, which is characterized by the voluntary participation of citizens whose behavior is not governed by coercion or imposed by the government.”

The agenda looks packed, from a kickoff dinner with Ford executives, local Ford dealers, and local diplomats; to neighborhood tours of Jackson Heights, Coney Island, Brighton Beach, Harlem, and the West Village; to a number of site visits, including:

• The Point Community Development Corporation
• Sesame Workshop
• Sustainable South Bronx
• Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding
• The United Nations

I’d have loved to be a fly on the wall; this looks like quite an enriching—and exhausting!—few weeks. Imagining this budding global network of NGO leaders, I can’t help but remember old episodes of Captain Planet: by their powers combined, who knows what amazing things might happen?