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This is call to action...for those of you who have Facebook accounts and want to use them foster world peace.

Chase Community Giving has partnered with Facebook to run a campaign to give away $1 million. We need you to vote for Sister Cities International! (Not Chicago Sister Cities International – no offense Chicago – nor other local programs). Click the link below to help us make a run for the money

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Looking at Global Education

Live from Doha, Qatar – I’m writing at the intersection of exhaustion and jet lag. It’s not a good place but I can sleep on the plane, right? I’m here attending the first World Innovation Summit on Education (WISE). The event is hosted and underwritten by the Qatar Foundation.

This is a serious meeting of the minds from the education sector – university presidents, national policy makers, NGO leaders, education reformers, multinational funders, community education advocates, open source and techie types, heads of state, corporate executives – more than 1,000 people are in the conversation. The Institute of International Education, one of our sister institutions, is one of the key supporting organizers.

 

The conference has been exploring three major themes: innovation, sustainability, and global education. With breakout sessions looking at inequality, higher education, funding, technology, women's education, e-learning, special needs, global mobility, access, social media, conflict zones, and minority inclusion among other topics.

 

The breadth and depth of the dialogue in and out of sessions has been terrific, but let me start with some facts:

• 115 million children around the world are not attending school
• 776 million adults cannot read or write
• 40% of the population in the Arab world is under 25
• One quarter of the world’s youth lives in the Arab World
• One of every three youth in the Arab World are unemployed
• The E.U. provides .5% (of GDP) budget subvention for education and 40% subvention to agriculture
• The cost of one additional solider stationed in Afghanistan is equal to building 20 new schools in the country
• In developing countries, 90% of working women with an education reinvest their salary in their family, compared to 40% of men who reinvest in their family
• 40% of West Africa and South Africa is illiterate
• Half of all the teachers in Sub-Sahara Africa are untrained or undertrained
• Africa needs 4 million new teachers in the next 5 years to meet demands
• One third of higher education students in South Africa are studying via distance learning
• There are 4 billion active mobile accounts worldwide
• There are 1.5 billion active web accounts worldwide
• 2% of student learning worldwide is happening via mobile technology
• A new study suggests adults will have 10.8 jobs by the age of 42
• Only 2% of U.S. students study abroad

 (Note: Facts are from various sources and speakers throughout the conference.)

 

Since I can't do the conference sessions justice by recasting them in summary, (information and speaker videos are online at the WISE conference website), I'm sharing some of my favorite soundbytes, comments, and opinions:

• Education is a basic human right and there is an education deficit globally.
• Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave. (Arabic saying)
• We need to create knowledge societies.
• It’s no longer a career for life, but a lifetime of careers.
• Nothing is more dangerous than a world view from someone who has had no view of the world.
• We need excellence and equity in education.
• We need to create global competence among our citizens.
• Knowledge transcends time. Knowledge travels.
• We need to change the system. Real reform puts the student front and center not the bus schedule.
• Education is an economic driver.
• Knowledge is the human adventure.
• We have corporate social responsibility, but what we need is intellectual social responsibility.
• An unexamined life is not worth living. (Socrates)
• An educator makes the hard seem easy.
• Technology breaks isolation and brings learning to remote sites.
• Education and innovation will be the currency of the 21st century. (Obama)
• Teachers bring knowledge to life.
• Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire. (Yates)
• Education is the key to building a culture of peace.

My deep appreciation to all of the speakers and participants (quoted and unquoted) who I spoke with for their thoughts, opinions, and passion. My less-than-stellar note-taking doesn't allow me to properly attribute each quote, so I apologize. But clearly, they left an impression on me.

 

All this has me thinking…what else can Sister Cities International and our network of 2,000 communities do to flex our muscles of influence on education globally?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

President Obama: Sister Cities Exchanges Are Wonderful

In a town hall meeting today in Shanghai, China, President Obama mentioned the value of more than 200 friendship cities between the U.S. and China. Later in the event, he was asked about the Shanghai-Chicago partnership. His response:

"I was just having lunch before I came here with the Mayor of Shanghai, and he told me that he has had an excellent relationship with the city of Chicago -- my home town -- that he's visited there twice. And I think it's wonderful to have these exchanges between cities."

He continued by talking about the types of exchanges he thinks would be favorable, such as climate change and clean energy. He finished by saying, "..it's a terrific opportunity I think for us to learn from each other."

Citizen Diplomacy is on the move! A great acknowledgement for the sister cities movement.

Read the whole Town Hall Transcript.

And We're Off! Race for World Peace (part 3)

A visual post from our Festival - enjoy the array of photos. I couldn't squeeze in all 12 performances. But we have a little something from the eight cultures/countries represented.

Many thanks to our major sponsors Collective Media, The Hill, and BP, as well as all of our in-kind donors. Without their help our event could not have been a success.

   Our African drummers thundered Pennsylvania Avenue

     Modern Dance

     Traditional Indian Dance

      Ukranian wedding dance

     DJ Undadog with World Beats

    Clowns and Henna tatoo artists

Jugglers and face painters

      Flamenco energy warmed up the audience

   

   By the end of the festival, the Bolivian dancers had us jumping

Medical Supplies to Iraq

Laguna Niguel, CA is not wasting any time connecting with its new sister city in Al Qaim, Iraq. Check out this brief video about the delivery of vital medical supplies.

And We're Off! Race(s) for World Peace (part 2)

While we were busy squaring away our event in during dark morning hours in Washington, DC, our 1st Race for World Peace was busy 'going global.'

Illinois & France's Race Exchange

The Palatine (IL) Sister Cities program hosted it's own mini-walk locally. Members of Palatine Sister Cities braved the cold and the rain to take a an architectural tour in downtown Palatine. The walk, created by Marg Duer, gave historical information about past owners of homes. At the end of the tour, the group enjoyed an inside tour of a home over 100 years old, which took 20+ years to renovate by the current owners. The walk concluded at Palatine’s farmers market, with hot coffee, fresh baguettes and French butter.

Earlier that day, Palatine’s sister city in France (Fontenay-le-Comte) took a walk in their own downtown, where the buildings are much, much older but shared a similar day of cold weather.

With the economy in its present state, it is difficult for Palatine and Fontenay to schedule an exchange, so this sister city partnership opted to “share something together” through the mutual event without being on the same continent.

(Thanks to Sue Minott for her reporting on these events.)

Fort Worth, Texas
(As reported from one of the Fort Worth participants)

It’s very dark, and very cold at 6am in Ft. Worth in October. That was check-in time for Team Texas at our satellite Sister Cities Race for World Peace. The race course wound along the Trinity River in a park in downtown Ft. Worth - we ran by a sign for geese crossing, underneath a beautiful canopy of trees and past a statue of Mark Twain reading in the park – a far cry from the city course in Washington, but that’s the way we roll in Texas!

We had lots of energy (for being as early as it was, and for the lack of caffeine prior to the race) and managed to get the crowd involved, so much so that along the course, and the turn we had runners as well as several of the course marshals chanting “Go Sister Cities! Go World Peace!” It was a great experience, and it was fun to participate, even remotely, with the amazing efforts that took place in Washington DC!

Cluj, Romania
A small but hearty group of citizen diplomats (of all ages!) in the third largest city in Romania took to the streets and mountains in their efforts to spread the word of world peace.

Thank you to each of the local sister cities programs that organized a satellite race/walk in conjunction with Sister Cities International. Bravo!

Add your hometown to our list of host cities for 2010 - email us and we'll tell you how easy it is.


Many thanks to our major sponsors of the event: Collective Media, The Hill, and BP, as well as all of in-kind donors,

And We're Off! 1st Race & Festival for World Peace (part 1)

I'm out of breath and so is the staff. Two weeks ago, we hosted the Sister Cities Leadership meetings in DC and last weekend, the Race. Gladly I can say, both were a rousing success.

Anytime you host a first time event it is - how can one say this politely - a learning experience. The staff "learned" quite a bit about how to navigate the DC city government to get all of the appropriate event permits. We learned how to correctly hold an 8oz cup of water for runners whirling by a water station. We even learned that there are such people as grouchy balloon artists. But most importantly - we had a lot of fun getting to our finish line, which was Race Day.
The festival stage set-up started at the pre-dawn hour of 3am. The Pennsylvania Avenue transformation started. By 7am, the staff had the registration and information tents ready and sponsor banners were lightly flapping in the breeze.
As 9am approached the police appeared en masse, the roads closed, and the course marshalls were in place. With over 500 runners/walkers registered from 17 states and DC, folks hurried to find their place for the start. At this moment, all the open-ended questions I had thought about for nine months ran through my head: would the runners like the course, will people show up for the festival, are the first festival performers here, do we have enough port-a-johns, will the rain hold-off to name a few. As I stood about 50 yards down from the Start Line, it was definitely a thrill to have the participants rush by as the event got underway.
I should note that despite the 90% chance of rain forecast the evening before, we happily enjoyed overcast skies and 65 degree temperatures for the whole event (with the exception of a brief 5-minute shower at the start of the festival.)

Just 15 minutes later, it was all over - sort of. At least for the quickest male athlete, Demesse Tefera was the first winner of the Race for World Peace with a time of 15:10. The top female runner appeared shortly thereafter. Hirut Mandefro took the top female prize with a time of 17:04. Supporting family members and friends created a human channel of cheers and applause that stretched from the Finish Line about 100 yards out.
Over the next hour we encouraged, hooted, and prodded our participants on to the Finish Line. (Official timings.) On to the awards ceremony and the festival!

Many thanks to our major sponsors of the event: Collective Media, The Hill, and BP, as well as all of in-kind donors,

(Stay tuned to this space for a series of perspectives on the race, our festival, and the four virtual races that happened in the U.S. abroad.)