OPINION
50 Years United By Carma Elliot CMG OBE, College President This term has been a wonderful start to the celebration of our 50 year history in Singapore, and as I reflect on the collective activity that has taken place alongside all of the ‘business as usual’—the learning, the teaching, the operations and the care—I am grateful to be a part of such a wholeheartedly committed community. There have been so many opportunities for us to be ‘together in purpose’ this term. At the Alumni Reunion in August, we kicked off our 50th celebrations in earnest and gathered together, virtually, some 700 alumni from across the globe. While rekindling connections with former classmates and teachers, our alumni were also keen to explore what the College is today, and to understand how they can give back by continuing to live the mission in their lives beyond the College. The UWCSEA Alumni Values in Action Awards were launched that weekend, and the awardees announced during Founders Week at the book-end alumni event, our Holiday Reunion. It was humbling to see the ways in which our 19 awardees are making a difference in their communities, supporting inclusion, peace, sustainability and community wellbeing. Activity around the theme of peace gathered pace in September, with the launch of our first White Paper Educating for Peace: UWCSEA’s Mission for Future Peacebuilders. UWC Day, on 21 September, was celebrated across both campuses by students and staff. That evening, I was honoured to host series namesake Kishore Mahbubani on the East Campus for a conversation examining perspectives on peace in front of a small audience of students and staff, and a much wider online audience. The messages of peace and the importance of the role of youth in the process of peacebuilding are continuing to spread, as the video recording of that discussion has continued to gather audiences in the intervening months. While we will have more to share on this topic later this year, 2 | Dunia December 2021
we were also pleased to announce UWCSEA’s partnership with National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Asian Peace Programme (APP) at the event. In a fitting culmination of our theme of Peace, the UWCSEA Initiative for Peace Toolkit was then launched at the end of September, and we welcomed alumni students and staff in an online event which served to highlight the importance of this programme, and the impact that initiatives such as IfP can have on the lives of young people and their communities. We have funded an experienced IfP facilitator to take care of the nascent programme, which we hope will grow to become a global network of IfP events, each having profound and long lasting personal impact on participants. And then to the culminating event of this term, Founders Week. It began on Monday, 13 December with another inspiring Kishore Mahbubani Speaker Series event—a conversation with Faith Abiodun, the incoming Executive Director of UWC International for which I was joined by two of our High School students, Ruth and Anthony. Faith was inspirational on so many topics and really connected with our students. He shared that for him “UWC is possibility—plus agency” and that he hopes students will both see what can happen, and know that they can make it happen. It was an inspiring glimpse of the future of our global movement, and of the discussions that will take place in the UWCSEA Forum Learning to Shape the Future, which will take place in late April. We were so pleased to welcome so many in the UWC global community to the event, which was Faith’s first public appearance in his new role. On Tuesday afternoon we began our first ever Giving Day with a splash when 50 Dover staff jumped into the pool to kick off the 30 hours of giving! I enjoyed baking 1,500 cookies with parent volunteers on both campuses, and had the joy of handing them out on our birthday, joined by scholars, students and members of the leadership team. The whole
