On April 25-26, IVECA Global Coordinator Ms. Hind El Mimouni presented
to the faculty of Education Sciences at Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco. Within the conference’s larger theme of Innovative Technology and Interculturality, she shared with the academic audience how IVECA connects schools around the world through a virtual experience in which they are able to interact and develop intercultural skills for global citizenship.
Ms. Hind started explaining how an IVECA semester is typically implemented. Teachers, administrators and educational leaders are all welcome to join our program and the first step is to attend an interactive Professional Development Session in which the technological aspects needed to run the program are presented. After that, classrooms are matched with specific partner schools in different countries according to grade, curricular needs, and target language. For a period of approximately 10 weeks, students study and collaborate via IVECA’s Virtual Classroom, while teachers mediate the learning experience and develop their leadership skills in intercultural competence.
Ms. Hind explained the importance and uniqueness of IVECA’s curriculum design framework developed by the IVECA founder, Dr. Eunhee Jung, IVECA’s program seamlessly integrates participant schools’ pre-existing curricula, national standards to the five dimensions of intercultural competence through engaging and challenging activities. She went further and emphasized that as IVECA is also committed to the United Nations (UN) Agenda of 2030, most lessons are aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and, therefore, has been contributing to this worldwide task of a better world. She remarked on the importance of IVECA’s model, which offers ongoing support and assistance throughout the semester, and also monitors and assesses the growth of students’ intercultural competence.
Ms. Hind elucidated the distinct qualities of IVECA’s programming, and how - beyond our internationally respected and UN-supported curriculum - IVECA is also recognized for its effective applications of synchronous and asynchronous exchange methods. Also unique to IVECA is its regular organization of Global Youth Roundtables in New York where youth UN representatives are able to meet in-person in New York and virtually with students around the globe and engage in a constructive and lively exchange of intercultural skills, knowledge, attitude and awareness. Ms. Hind expressed how special the IVECA experience is for all involved - whether they are students (through our STEAM and Global Citizenship program), teachers or leaders in international and innovative education. Ultimately, the presentation was a resounding success and the audience was deeply moved by IVECA's commitment to promoting intercultural competence of Global Citizens in making a more peaceful and beautiful world.