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| Earth's Hope is the theme of Asia's first GIN Conference. |
WAB welcomes over 300 students and teachers from over 40 schools in ten different countries for the EARCOS Global Issues Network (GIN) Conference, April 4 - 6. WAB is proud to host the first GIN conference to be held in Asia, and to cooperate with EARCOS on this truly international gathering of young people, which will be coming from as nearby as Tianjin, Shanghai and Hong Kong and as far away as Japan, Korea and even Turkey.
The mission of the Global Issues Network is to help students realize that they can make a difference in the world by empowering them to work with their peers internationally to develop solutions for global issues. This weekend’s conference will provide the extraordinary opportunity for a diverse group of youth to share what they’ve done in their local communities, as well as to discuss how they can collaborate in the future.
Hosting this global event is of special significance to WAB, as the school has led the way in introducing the Global Issues Network into Asia. In fact, just over two years ago, Sheila Burch, former WAB teacher and co-coordinator of the conference, established the first Asian chapter of the Global Issues Group at WAB. That same year, WAB students participated in the first GIN Conference, in Luxembourg, and returned again the following year as presenters. Additionally, in 2006, two GIN students from WAB spoke before an audience of 500 teachers and administrators at an EARCOS Conference in Bangkok, as part of a panel discussion about youth and global issues.
WAB has inspired and assisted other international schools in Beijing to form their own GIN groups and have collaborated with other schools around Asia on raising awareness of global issues. This weekend’s conference provides yet another extraordinary opportunity for youth to explore global issues and exchange ideas and hope for how they, as teenagers, can take action and make a real difference in their own home countries, and around the world.
For this weekend’s conference, WAB and EARCOS welcome a number of extraordinary leaders, activists and authors to share their experience and expertise with students and teachers alike. Keynote speakers include Jean-Francois Rischard, author of "High Noon: Twenty Global Problems, Twenty Years to Solve Them," which inspired the formation of the Global Issues Network. WAB also welcomes Marc Kielburger of Leaders Today/Free the Children (his brother, Craig Kielburger was scheduled to speak but will be filming the Oprah Show that day!).
Other keynote speakers include Austin Gutwein, a 15 year old American boy who started Hoops for Hope to benefit AIDS orphans; Jane Goodall, via live interactive video conference; and John Liu from Earth's Hope. UNESCO is presenting a workshop on its Education for Sustainable Development program and the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) will present a workshop on linking global issues to the curriculum.
In addition to gaining firsthand exposure to an extraordinary line-up of keynote speakers, students themselves will be presenting workshops on various global issues and how their school has taken action to make a difference in the world. Each school is responsible for presenting at least one workshop. These student-led workshops span the full spectrum of the 20 Global Issues identified in “High Noon” and reflect a significant amount of diversity, ranging from the practical and action-oriented, such as “Beyond Recycling: How to help your school become more environmentally friendly” to the more philosophical or theoretical, including “Finance, Media, and the Loss of Culture: Societal Consequences and Structural Solutions.”
Conference organizers were overwhelmed by the amount of interest they received from schools all over Asia, and beyond. In order to accommodate those interested parties who were turned away, due to space limitations, EARCOS is organizing a series of podcasts to be created for presentations by keynote speakers.
Due to the space limitations, the conference is restricted to all registered participants. If you have any questions about the conference, feel free to contact Sheila Burch at sburch@wab.edu or visit the website at http://www.earcos.org/gin2008/.