Our Global Citizenship Program is the culmination of many years of effort, inspired by our CEO’s decades of support for cultural and educational exchange programs. NIS has a long history of international engagement, from our engagement with Empower Peace and our USAID technology project in the early 2000s, to more recent initiatives with Seeds of Peace and the Cairo-Copenhagen exchange.
Understanding and tolerating differences is a central tenet of the NIS school mission. It is also a central tenet of Global Citizenship Education [GCED], as defined by UNESCO. As the world becomes increasingly globalized, education must instill respect for human rights, awareness of social justice and care for our shared environment. Our students must become global citizens who recognize both their rights and responsibilities, and have the knowledge and skills to be actively engaged in transforming themselves and their communities.
At NIS, we believe that education can and should be transformative, and that GCED has the power to change people, communities, and even the world. Our program is designed to foster the following characteristics:
- a solid understanding of global issues and universal values
- a tolerant and empathetic attitude based on respect for the world’s diversity and awareness of our interdependence
- a strong skill-set for global networking and conflict resolution, including communication and critical thinking skills
- a powerful capacity to work cooperatively and responsibly towards common goals
Our program has adopted the UNESCO framework for GCED and Education for Sustainable Development [ESD] to guide our objectives:
Source: developed by UNESCO based on inputs from experts on GCED and ESD from around the world and the Technical Consultation on GCED, held in Seoul in 2013, and the First UNESCO Forum on GCED that took place in Bangkok in 2013.