June 2020

The panel was part of the conference on Global Transformative Leadership, convened by the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG) and the World Academy for Arts and Science (WAAS).

Chaired by Remus Pricopie, former Minister of Education of Romania, and Witold Kinsner, Vice President of Educational Activities, this diverse panel went through a wide range of perspectives – with the (almost) common denominator, that a transformation of the current educational was vital.

While the contributions made by all participants were brilliant, in this post we focus on the particular perspective that TRANS4M provided. However, we will shortly provide a link to the entire panel and its findings.

TRANS4M’s contribution, presented by Alexander Schieffer, opened with the perspective, that instead of a world-class education, modelled on the current western educational model, we rather need a world inclusive education – that includes the rich diversity of cultural diversity and epistemologies. Furthermore, he proposed to substitute world class with world care, advocating for the role of education to create relevant learning-to-innovation processes that can indeed creatively address the burning issues of our times. Such an inclusive and caring education, if lodged within, rather than outside of society (as many existing educational institutions are), could then indeed lay the foundation for wide-spread, open, accessible and shared learning, in an applied form, activating the innovation potential of communities, organisations and entire societies. Schieffer concluded with a number of examples from the Trans4m community, and with a call for a radical transformation of our existing educational institutions to enable them to truly contribute to the societal and global renewal so urgently required.

The high-level participants of this truly global panel were:

• Pavel Luksha, Founder and Director, Global Education Futures initiative
• Marcel van de Voorde, Professor, University of Technology Delft; WAAS Fellow
• Sue Henderson, President, New Jersey City University, USA
• Alberto Zucconi, President, IACP, Italy; Chair of the Board of Trustees, WAAS; Secretary General, WUC
• Carol Carter, President & CEO, GlobalMindED
• Lisa Petrides, Founder & CEO, ISKME
• Robert Singer, Chair & Board of Trustees of World ORT
• Janani Ramanathan, Sr. Research Analyst, Mother’s Service Society, India; WAAS Fellow
• Valerie Hannon, Co-founder, Global Education Leaders Partnership
• Lilac Wasserman, Co-founder, Mifras & Global Collaborations
• Alexander Schieffer, Co-Founder, TRANS4M Center for Integral Development and Home for Humanity