Dear all,
Welcome to the GIN Conference of 2018 at the International School of Curitiba. We look forward to an exciting meeting of the minds of South America and the the dialogue that will ensue. This is authentic learning at its best, with real world implications and challenges that will truly push, and possibly redefine, our understanding of Character and Citizenship. We encourage you to expand your thinking, establish new connections, question your beliefs, and don’t let the limitations of the past restrict your vision of the future.
With ISC having the privilege and challenge of hosting this year’s GIN Conference, it has taken me back two years to when I travelled to the Cordillera Blanca, in Peru, to climb peaks I had been dreaming of since high school. Unfortunately, they looked nothing like the images I had once seen. What had once been beautiful routes of ice and snow, now lay barren and unclimbable. The faces had simply melted away. Additionally, and just last week, while skiing in Switzerland, we saw a glacier that once crept upon the town of Saas Fee just 100 years ago, now hanging many kilometers above, steadily receding.
These experiences, amongst many, have made me pause and worry if our youth of today will be able to enjoy the rugged bliss of glaciated, alpine environments when they get older. Will these disappearing vistas of present, be lost? The GIN conference here at ISC allows our future leaders to grapple with issues such as this, through the modeling of sustainability, that will one day, hopefully, alter our present trend of overconsumption and resource misuse towards one of progressive thinking and living. ISC welcomes you and your thinking, and truly values your engagement with these issues, because your learning at this conference will poignantly shape and inform the future relationship between humanity and nature.
Mr. Owain Phillips
Secondary School Principal
ISC GIN Faculty Advisor
It is my pleasure to welcome each of you to the GIN conference South America 2018. I want to thank every participant in this conference for embracing GIN passionately and tackling real problems that permeate the diverse and dynamic world we live in. It is my wish that you feel you have a central role for the culmination of a collective accomplishment — that of developing a vision and defining actions. I truly hope this conference with its nuances will add to everyone’s experiences and authentic learning.
I would also like to acknowledge Rodrigo Rose for taking on the role of student onsite conference coordinator very majestically. Planning a conference and making it happen is, however, beyond the capacity of any individual working alone and Mr. Rose had an incredibly energetic and supportive team, which I watched “tearing it up” with confidence in themselves and each other. No task is too big for such dedicated people working together.
Finally, I would like to address what the EngaGINg minds, EnlarGINg ideas conference looks like in the big picture. I believe this initiative means that the International School of Curitiba will for a few days become a hotspot of positivity, where young people will dare to shape something as abstract as the world’s future, or at least part of it. This will potentially trigger a turning point for us as individuals and in my opinion very few things, if anything, are as real.
ISC GIN Student Leader
On behalf of the GIN team of students, educators and administrators at the International School of Curitiba, I would like to welcome you to the 2018 EngaGINg Minds, EnlarGINg Ideas GIN Conference. Over the past months, our team has been working diligently to prepare the most interactive, diverse, and rewarding experience to incoming students, and we hope the activities we have in store for these three days will inspire you towards sustainability, innovation and success.
With a brand new student-developed Global Village curriculum geared towards supporting GIN initiatives, as well as a group of inspiring keynote speakers making a legitimate contribution to their communities, our conference is meant to encourage the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and stories of successes and overcoming challenges. As a supportive learning community, ISC is also very happy to be hosting the first-ever Latin American GIN conference school-stay, and our healthy and sustainable menu will help you learn to live a more just and conscientious lifestyle.
Our objective as a whole is for our conference to be both an insightful and enjoyable experience. Over the next three days, you will be exploring and sharing your passions, while at the same time getting out of your comfort zones to learn what others have achieved in their own communities. Welcome to ISC, we hope your experience at GIN will be as rewarding as it has been to us.
Global Issues Network
Dear ISC’s GIN Conference Participants,
On behalf of the Global Issues Network, Ashley and I are honored and pleased to be part of International School of Curitiba’s school community, working together we are hosting this student-led GIN Conference. We are celebrating the long term commitment of our four GINterns, Rodrigo Rose, Guilherme Grupenmacher, Rafaela Damasceno, and Valeria Wu who have been working closely with us for years creating the materials with Ashley that we are using in our conference. Together we created ISC ‘s leadership team who have worked long and hard for many months on the planning “our”conference This conference is very special and unique for many reasons. Every effort has been made to reduce the carbon footprint of this conference. Many innovative ideas and activities have been created just for this event. We look forward to you sharing your ideas and suggestions after you have a chance to work with and learn from our many student/mentor-authored materials. We value your thoughts! Each shared initiative will impact our future for the better by lowering our combined carbon footprint. We sincerely want to thank you for joining us and giving us the feedback that will help us grow.
Being an empathetic and engaged participant will change your life!
Onward!
Linda Sills
Global Issues Network
Executive Director