In February, Arigatou International – Geneva attended the World Innovation Summit for Education, or WISE@Paris, which was held in Paris on 20-21 February 2019. WISE is an international, multi-sectoral platform for creative thinking, debate, and purposeful action for new approaches to education, launched in 2009 by the Qatar Foundation.
WISE aims to build the future of education by promoting innovation and collaboration, through both the biennial Summit and a range of ongoing programs. This sixth regional forum, which took place under the patronage of French President Emmanuel Macron, was held within the theme “Education Futures: Fostering Learning Societies.”
The two-day summit gathered over 800 experts, trailblazers, practitioners, and professionals to discuss the future of education and innovative learning. Ms. Eleonora Mura, Program Officer, attended the WISE@Paris summit representing Arigatou International – Geneva in order to meet with innovators from primary and secondary education from sectors such as coding and artificial intelligence. Participating in WISE@Paris also offered the opportunity to showcase the Ethics Education initiative of Arigatou International: Several debates pointed to the importance of creating spaces in schools to nurture values, ethics and learning to live together. This was a timely discussion to reflect on how the Ethics Education initiative can join forces with WISE.
The forum consisted of various interactive sessions and discussions on a variety of topics, such as “Decrypting the Future of Work’” and “Cultivating Global Citizenship”. Guest speakers shared diverse perspectives on education and learning: “The Japanese concept of Ikigai is about doing what you love, what the world needs, what you are good at what you can be paid for, and this is exactly what education should be about”, shared Idriss Aberkane, scholar and author of “Free Your Brain”.
Other speakers shared best practices and discussed the challenges pertaining to their implementation in reality: “We seem to know what the answers are in education- more play, experimentation, and hands-on work- and that’s what successful companies require. Yet it’s been very hard to inject that kind of change in education systems,” shared WISE CEO, Stavros Yiannouka.
The WISE@Paris event was also an opportunity to meet wonderful innovative individuals and to learn from their inspirational stories of change. Eleonora met with youth representatives from Tunisia, learning from their engagement to support learner-led projects to foster change and transformation in their communities.
We thank WISE@Paris for hosting such a thought-provoking forum.
You can learn more about WISE by clicking here.
