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I’m an English teacher. Words are my thing. When we first visited KICS in 2014 to explore if it was a good fit for us, I fell in love with its mission statement, mostly because of its beautifully paralleled use of prepositions. That said, mostly, mission statements aren’t my thing, and going through the process of creating a mission statement for B2THEWORLD was quite the task for me – boiling down something so big and so important and so alive to a small number of words that were meant to be permanent was very difficult. However, when I go back and look at the words we settled on (some of us begrudgingly leaving other words behind), I fall in love again with what we do. We believe that “by leveraging the power of education, we combat the generational impacts of war.” I see that these words in our mission statement are big and important and alive.
As I look back through our website and reflect on our “About page”, particularly on our values, I’m thankful that I get the honor to sit with our B2THEWORLD team here in Kigali and our B2THEWORLD Board in the United States every once in a while. I get to talk with experts in the education field and read about their work and envision the impact of these words truly coming to life.
One of our values is “Transformative Education - we develop future leaders of communities and countries.” Transformative Education is what we offer the education space and a suffering world. So, what is it? Our next series is going to take a deeper look at the three pillars of a B2THEWORLD transformative education: leadership mindset, a pedagogical approach to 'why', and a schoolwide focus on play. We believe that these three pillars undergird the kind of education that can combat the generational impacts of war and offer fullness of life for every child impacted by war.
So, stay tuned for more to come on these pillars that support what we do. In the meantime, what do you think? What gives education the power to truly transform a child’s future?
Blessings,
Susie Thomas
Co-Founder
B2THEWORLD.