Global Issues Network
The Global Issues Network has as its mission:
to help students realise they can make a difference by empowering
them to work internationally with their peers to develop solutions
for global issues. Begun by teachers and students from six international
schools in Europe, the programme is based upon High Noon: Twenty
Global Problems, Twenty Years to Solve Them by Jean-François
Rischard, former World Bank Vice-President for Europe. Rischard
describes imminent issues that can only be solved through global
cooperation. Among these are water shortages, global warming,
environmental degradation, infectious diseases, poverty, illiteracy,
depletion of fisheries, peacekeeping, and the loss of ecosystems.
Rischard notes that the existing institutions charged with addressing
such issues, namely nation-states, government departments and
international organisations, are self-serving, cumbersome and
inadequate for the task. He calls for an alternative model of
global governance based upon independent global networks that
are flexible and super-responsive.
International schools already represent a network of independent
organisations that co-ordinate their worldwide efforts toward
a common purpose, and are therefore an excellent platform to apply
Mr Rischard's concepts. Students can be encouraged to think systemically
about real issues while also taking action to improve the human
condition. This approach involves collaboration rather than competition,
where students assume leadership of their own programme. Their
network should promote both face-to-face conferences and on-going
communication via the latest technologies.
We must develop new instincts and politics across the planet,
whereby each of us is first a global citizen, second a national
citizen, and third a local citizen. Right now, we have it the
other way around.
It's for these two reasons – the need for new, out-of-the-box
methodologies and for a new mindset – that I am excited
about the experiment started by some distinguished international
schools. I can think of few educational projects as worthy of
support.
J.-F. Rischard, former Vice-President of the World Bank and author
of High
Noon: Twenty Global Issues, Twenty Years to Solve Them.
East Asia Regional Council of
Overseas Schools (EARCOS)
Brentville Subdivision, Barangay Mamplasan, Biñan, Laguna,
4024 Philippines
Phone: +63 (49) 511-5993/5994 | Fax: +63 (49) 511-4694
