It is my pleasure to welcome students, teachers, parents, distinguished guests,
Board Members and Trustees, to the second ACS International Peace Prize.
We are privileged to be part of a community where growth and development of
each individual child or young adult is taken very seriously and because of
that we pay a great deal of attention to the educational environment that we
provide.
The ACS International Schools have grown not only to be the largest of the
prestigious international schools in the London area but, more importantly,
they provide the greatest breadth of college preparatory programs in this area.
To this extent, our most challenging programs are a clear reflection of the
standards we wish to achieve.Our daily focus is towards the rigours of traditional
education and also towards each member of the community engaging in the process
of life-long learning, encouraging a thirst for knowledge and understanding.
As a consequence our students graduate to the best colleges and universities
around the world, including renowned Ivy League colleges in the U.S., Oxford
and Cambridge in the UK, Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden, Tokyo University
in Japan - and the list goes on.
It is a credit to the vision of the school's founders that ACS can provide
such outstanding facilities and such a complete and broad choice of programs
for our community.
Part of recognizing the value of what we do is the process of analyzing and
developing our vision for the future. As a professional body we bring in luminaries
such as Dr. Howard Gardner from the Harvard School of Education and Dr. Grant
Wiggins to follow so that we may stretch our understanding of the process of
education. For students we develop unique opportunities such as the British
Studies Program and the opportunity for our students to work with the ORBIS
World Health Organization team of doctors, who fly around the world performing
eye surgery in third world countries. It is our responsibility to continually
grow and develop as an organization.
The directions for this growth are supported by our philosophy statements
for each of our schools. These are compilations of the basic ingredients that
make up the reason for the existence of the school, and are the result of deliberations
by teachers, administrators, staff, students, and parents. They are statements
of what we as a community believe to be important in the education of students.
A large proportion of our statements deal with producing outstanding academic
opportunity and support, but significantly the importance of the diversity
of the student and parent body and the wealth of its international and cultural
experience is given special mention. ACS is an international school
with students from over 60 different nations. Our philosophy statements include
the statement that prescribes:
"
As a school we will develop an understanding of different philosophies and
cultures and instill a respect for people, their work, their beliefs and their
expressions and we should provide opportunities for students to understand
and appreciate other cultures".
That we take our philosophy statement seriously is evident in our being here
today celebrating the second International Peace Prize.
We thank the ACS International Schools Foundation for their support of this
prize which is awarded to a student or students aged 12-18 enrolled in an American
or International independent school whose substantial work promotes the understanding
of different philosophies and cultures, instills respect for people, their
work, their beliefs, their expressions and contributes to the advancement of
peace.
These are high ideals and I believe that we can be justifiably proud of being
part of a community that recognizes significant goals that each one of us might
aspire to at some time during our lives.
This year our finalists were from countries including Canada, India, Greece,
South Korea, and the UK and from states including California, Alabama, Florida,
and Massachusetts. The first place group prize goes to a group of students
from the American Community School, Cobham. Their work was a world challenge
project working with a Namibian school including raising funds for a classroom,
obtaining sponsorship, working with the Namibian High Commission, visiting
and teaching in the school, and providing an Internet link for the further
development of teaching facilities and project development.
Our overall individual prize winner's project is entitled Nation1 and this
is described as the development of a global on-line country for young people
to connect with each other through the youth movement and an avenue for building
world peace. Our winner has been active in a project to rebuild a school house
in Poondi Village and has been an active delegate and participant in the Hague
Appeal for Peace. He was part of a Junior Summit sponsored by MIT's media lab
and was master of ceremonies at the live video conference reading of the National
Declaration from MIT to the UN General Assembly.
I look forward to hearing from both winners when the prizes are awarded by
Dr. Merle Lefkoff. It is my pleasure to introduce Dr. Lefkoff as our guest
speaker today. She has worked with U.S. Congress, the Task Force on Public
Participation in Science and Technology, the White House Office of Public Liaison,
and the US Environmental Protection Agency. She was founder of the Program
in International Conflict Resolution at the United World Colleges and is a
consultant to the Kellogg National Fellowship Program.
Dr. Lefkoff has assisted negotiations as a mediator in Central America, Eastern
Europe, the Middle East, and also in Northern Ireland. She is presently Co-Director
with her Yugoslav counterpart of a five-year project, training multi-ethnic
teams to mediate disputes in Bosnia and Kosovo. She served on the Board of
Future Wave, producing entertainment products to counter violence in the media.
She has recently been appointed by the Governor of New Mexico to the Juvenile
Justice Advisory Committee.
I would like to welcome Dr. Lefkoff as our guest speaker today. Thank you.
