MISSION STATEMENT
The mission of the World Summit of Educators (WSE) is to be a global force for the transnational solidarity of educators.
SNAPSHOT
“In the coming years, I hope that we will see the realization of a world summit, not of politicians, but of educators. This is because nothing is of greater importance to humanity’s future than the transnational solidarity of educators.” This was the emphatic plea made by the founder of SUA, Daisaku Ikeda, in a speech he delivered at Teachers College, Columbia in 1996. It became the driving force for the genesis of the World Summit of Educators (WSE) in 2016, twenty years later. Spearheaded by Soka University of America (SUA) graduate students, it would bring to fruition the ideal of gathering educational leaders from around the world under one roof and under one aegis: Education for Global Citizenship (EGC).
The WSE and its re-energization with the publication of this website represents a unique development in the annals of education for a number of reasons. The Summit took its inspiration from a speech of Dr. Daisaku Ikeda, the founder of the University twenty years ago, entitled “Thoughts on Education for Global Citizenship,” but also from an MA Program in Educational Leadership and Societal Change inaugurated in 2014, the goals and ideals of which are consonant with those of Ikeda. It found its impassioned realization in the work of the first and second cohorts of the new Program, without whose voices, whose thoughtful and painstaking planning and organization the Summit would never have materialized when it did or as it did.
The Classes of 2016 and ’17 gave proof to the mission of the MA Program, which is to cultivate educational leaders who will play active roles as change agents in school and non-school settings and in the larger world around them. “The educational leader of tomorrow,” declares the Program, “requires a new kind of preparation for a new kind of world, global in scope, all-inclusive in depth and breadth, calling out for meaningful, broad-based societal change focused on harnessing the values of peace.”