Pangea Education Forum

Learning about each other is important and necessary, but learning from each other makes the knowledge more personal. Pangea’s forums are created to provide real-life projects for students at the high school and university levels enabling them to interact with students in developing countries via letters, video, internet, and video conferences, depending on the technology available in the developing community.  In some cases, Pangea provides educational resources to support local learning institutions.

Pangea’s Education Forums fall into two different categories: the Youth Education Series for high school participants and the University Education Forums for university level participants.

The Youth Education Series connects high school age students from different countries.  The programs begin by bringing cultural understanding through exchanges of letters, photos and videos.  In addition, more structured projects take place over a semester, which include exchanged questionnaires and creative assignments to share their cultures, opportunities and challenges.   

One such project took place with boys and girls schools in the village of Beit Sira in the West Bank and classes at The Woodlands High School in Texas (TWHS).  

The Fall 2005 and Spring 2006 classes at TWHS wrote letters over the course of each semester to two schools in the village of Beit Sira in The West Bank. Since boys and girls are schooled separately in Palestine, the male students wrote letters to the male class and the female students wrote to the female class, both of which were translated into Arabic by a student in The Woodlands.  Students sent photos of themselves along with disposable cameras, so the Palestinian students could share their lives through photos as well as words.

As our programs develop, Pangea will provide the structure to facilitate on-going interaction with the intention that in the process of learning from each other, students in both places have the opportunity to work on a common and mutually beneficial project over the course of a semester.  Pangea’s aim is to activate similar programs in other American high schools as well as high schools abroad.

The University Education Forums are currently in development with implementation set for late 2008. These forums will connect University students from the US with students in developing countries via a semester long project.   The goal is to empower students to work collaboratively to identify, evaluate and develop solutions for real life development issues in that particular country. 

The multi-step process will include research, identification and prioritization of development challenges, and discovery of strategies for positive transformation within our evolving global society.  Within this scope, Pangea will encourage students and future leaders to put aside preconceived ideas and biases in order to build dialogue through direct interaction and problem- solving activities.    

Please check back for updated information as it becomes available.