WSE Registration and Schedule

A short welcoming talk from Soka University Japan President Yoshihisa Baba will open this session. Then SUA students will present highlights from a series of dialog events that occurred at SUA during the Spring 2021 semester, as well as a summary of the WSE Youth Summit from June that included students from SUA, SUJ and other institutions around the world.

SUA alumni will present short discussions about how their Soka education has enabled them to advance global citizenship and foster peace in their work.

• Jamie Haynes (GS ’16) — Practitioner at Martin Middle School, Austin, Texas
• Maria Sanchez (UG ’05, GS ’06) — Coordinator of international students at Soka Colegio Brasil
• Tenji Takino (UG ’09) — Teacher, Osaka Public High School

Tracy Day and Justine Cassell, thought leaders in science and technology, will share their thoughts in dialog about how education can help us prepare for the profound impacts on society from exponential technologies such as artificial intelligence and biotechnology and the ways in which technology can challenge our humanity. By creating the right sort of science and ethical education, teachers can help prepare students and society for the challenges of this rapidly advancing future. Q&A will follow.

Jeff Duncan-Andrade, Ph.D., is professor of Latina/o Studies and Race and Resistance Studies at San Francisco State University. He is also a founder of the Roses in Concrete Community School, a community responsive lab school in East Oakland, and the Community Responsive Education Group.

A panel of educators from around the world will discuss the question: How do marginalized or disenfranchised communities identify, represent, and enhance their community through Freirean philosophy of reflection, critical dialogue, co-teaching, and direct action to influence policymakers to facilitate changes necessary for justice and equality? The panelists will focus on the use of Photovoice as a participatory, arts-based action research and education method that gives voice to participants’ experiences and perspectives while simultaneously facilitating critical consciousness-raising for social action and social change. 

• Daniel Meirinho, PhD — Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil
• Trinidad Jackson, MS, MPH — University of Louisville
• Joana Roque de Pinho, PhD — University of Lisbon
• Pam Newman, Photovoice participant, community organizer, consultant, and nurse practitioner in Louisville

Yet we Live, Strive and Succeed Panel Photo and Map Gallery

The gallery features photos taken by children and adults in Brazil, United States, and Guinea Bissau. It explores education’s self-liberating capacity in and by the community.

Francisco Escobedo, superintendent of the award-winning Chula Vista Elementary School District in San Diego County, California, will speak and describe his perspective on education. As Francisco states, “Last year was a year for reflection, especially about what matters most: treating everyone with respect and compassion; acting with a commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion in our work; taking time to appreciate one another and to build a stronger community; being open to perspectives that are not your own; and maintaining a laser-like focus on student outcomes.” A teacher and parent will also appear with Francisco, and they will discuss in dialog their perspectives on education from their own lived experiences.

Educators and students from around the world will submit video “Declarations” prior to the conference. WSE attendees will view the videos and will have the opportunity to develop personal declarations of how to build some of the main themes into their teaching and will result in a new Declaration for the 2021 WSE.

“The world seems to be defined by three words these days: Uncertainty, Inequity and Urgency,” Wanjira Mathai writes. ”But however we choose to shape this narrative, we must start with the idea that people, resilience and shared prosperity must be at the heart of how we build forward better from the disruptions we’ve faced. This really is a once-in-a-century reset that calls for new forms of global citizenship and solidarity.”

Wanjira is the vice president and regional director for Africa at WRI. She formerly served as co-chair of WRI’s Global Restoration Council and a senior advisor to the Global Restoration Initiative. She is the current chair of the Wangari Maathai Foundation and the former chair of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya.

An inspiring leader, Wanjira has over 20 years of experience advocating for social and environmental change on both local and international platforms. Over the years, Wanjira has also served important strategic and advocacy roles raising the prominence and visibility of global issues such as climate change, youth leadership, sustainable energy, and landscape restoration, at Women Entrepreneurs in Renewables (wPOWER), the Wangari Maathai Foundation (WMF), and the Green Belt Movement (GBM), the organization her mother, Wangari Maathai (2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate) founded in 1977.

Wanjira currently serves on the Board of the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) and as a leadership council member of the Clean Cooking Alliance. Wanjira is one of a few Six Seconds EQ practitioners in Kenya and was named one of the 100 Most Influential African Women in 2018 and 2020.

As COVID-19 cases peaked several times in 2020, the blurring of the boundary between the public and the personal over mask-wearing has set the stage for an almost farcical, yet all-too-real tragic drama of our time. “The Mask Debate” (formerly known as “Pan-Damn-It!”) is a play written by Kyung Hyun Kim, faculty member in the Department of East Asian Studies and Visual Studies at UC Irvine. The play highlights the much-publicized mask debate in the US not simply by juxtaposing the moral conflict between individual liberty and public health, but also the invisible social divisions that are complicated by the dynamic multi-ethnic makeup of Southern California.