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Youth Global Citizenship:
Educating for the Next Generation of World Citizens
The Institute for Education (IFE) is educating students for their future, not our past.
IFE designs and sponsors programs that educate for global citizenship and intercultural understanding. We work to prepare students for the world community and our connected economies. Students from public and private schools in the greater Washington DC area are encouraged to actively address world social, economic, and environmental issues, while teachers receive assistance in integrating a greater international focus into their curricula.
IFE believes it is our responsibility to ensure that young people are prepared to become productive members of the world community. In order to succeed on the world stage, today’s youth must be multi-lingual, multi cultural, and they must think in international terms. In essence, they must have high cultural IQ’s.
IFE’s Youth Global Citizenship program helps build the next generation of leaders who can meet these challenges. IFE co-founded the Center for International Education at Washington International School, which assists schools in bringing a greater international focus to their programs, resulting in more globally aware students. And IFE designs and sponsors other programs that promote global citizenship and intercultural understanding. Students in need receive tuition assistance.
Following are some of IFE’s specific programs and partners:
- IFE Fellows -- Students for Global Citizenship
Select youth leaders nominated by their high schools participate in an 18-month program to learn social entrepreneurship skills. Fellows work with experts to design a sustainable solution for a pressing social or environmental problem. Fellows then implement this solution within their own communities.
- Annual Call to Action Symposium
In 2007, the “Going Green: A Call to Action Symposium” was held at the World Bank, bringing together high school student leaders and educators from more than 50 public and private schools. They met with national and international leaders to address environmental and climate issues. Student and teacher teams designed action plans to implement within their schools and communities.
Institute for Education Fellows at the "Call to Action" Symposium,
"Going Green" held at the World Bank in Washington, DC - LearnServes in China, Zambia, Paraguay, Japan and Poland:
LearnServes, which are programs of IFE partner organization LearnServe International, are immersion programs for high school teams of students and teachers who travel to developing regions of the world each year to study global issues and successful models for sustainable change. In 2007, teams traveled to China, Paraguay, and Zambia. In 2008, a special LearnBusiness Japan included an economic focus. Teacher-student teams return to their schools to report on lessons learned and encourage an expanded international curriculum so that all students can become more competent to thrive in a "flat world."
