When we launched the website http://internationaledwa.org in spring 2003, we gave birth to a public face for an entity that became known as the Washington State Coalition for International Education or the “Coalition” for short. Over the past seven years, a variety of individuals and organizations have played key roles in advancing the mission of the Coalition — to prepare all students for today’s interconnected world — while developing themselves into leaders in international education.
For a number of years, the Coalition was able to support a range of interesting, innovative projects in the state, primarily through funding from the Longview Foundation State Innovations grants. The grants, though not large (around $15,000/year), were enough to get things started, that is, to create innovation.
There was a lapse in funding in 2009, and the Coalition went into a state of hibernation, you could say. The website, with its many links to resources and information about the evolution of international education in this state, remained, but we stopped putting out newsletters and supporting the email lists.
In 2010, the Coalition was funded once again as part of a Grant for Multi-State Initiatives on Critical Issues by Longview Foundation. This year, Washington is teaming with the states of New Jersey and West Virginia. In addition to supporting and attending specific events in each other’s states, we have proposed to build a “Web 2.0 Presence” for Global Education. We don’t know quite what that will look like yet, but the Washington team members decided that perhaps a logical first step in our state would be to reintroduce the Coalition and redesign our website to better serve the needs of Web 2.0 (and beyond).
Please join us on this journey. We’re excited, and hope you will be too.
— Steering Committee Member, Michele Anciaux Aoki