 Hawaii offers a very unique opportunity for bringing students from around the world together to learn about global issues. Our guest today is Mr. Robert Landau, Executive Director of the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools, who has also spearheading the first ever Global Issues Network Conference to be held at Hawaii's prestigious Eomani School. The conference will bring together 155 students from Oahu, Maui, and the Big Island together with students from Seoul, South Korea. Welcome to Asian Review. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. You're quite welcome. You're quite welcome. Well, Global Issues Network Conference. Wow, it sounds pretty exciting. Well, it is exciting, Bill. And actually, it goes all the way back to 2006. The first conference started at Luxembourg at the American School of Luxembourg. And it stems from a book called High Noon, 20 Global Problems in 20 Years to Solve Them. And that book was actually written in about 2002, 2004. So we're kind of running out of time if we only have 20 years to solve these crucial problems. So it started at the American International School, did you say? In Luxembourg. Okay. So is this something that goes from private school to private school to private school regardless where it might be in the world? Well, interestingly, the book was written by a vice president of the World Bank. And he wrote this book about the 20 Global Problems really geared towards adult problem solvers. The head of the school at the time, Clayton Lewis, read the book and it talked about needing networks of problem solvers around the world looking at local problems from a global perspective. And so Clayton said, this would be a great opportunity for high school students to deal with these problems long before they even get into university or into the real world. Wow. How long have you been associated with? Since the very first conference. I was the director of the International School of Prague. I knew Clayton. He was very enthusiastic about this first conference. And I thought, hey, we need to get involved. And as the director of the school, sometimes directors tell other people what to do. But I said, look, I'm gonna go with a group of students and some teachers to this first conference and see what it was all about. Great, great. Well, yeah, this is really interesting. So when exactly will it be held here in Hawaii at Iolani School? So it's going to be next week. Next week? February 24th and the 25th. And you know, Bill, these conferences are run all over the world, primarily stemming from international schools. And many years ago here in the United States, the National Association of Independent Schools launched what they call Challenge 2020. It was kind of a similar thing. It didn't really take off and wasn't sustained. And so now the National Association of Independent Schools really advocates for the Global Issues Network, which is a international school worldwide event. So this conference will not only be held at Iolani School, be held at a number of other schools around the world. They're held all over the world at various times in the year. Not on the same day, okay. No, they're different times. A school volunteers to host the conference invites other schools to join. And it's really the conference is an incubator. It's a stepping stone. It's a place where the kids come together and realize they're not alone in addressing and feeling passionate about these world problems. So there was no gin in Hawaii. I moved here from Singapore about a year and a half ago to take up my new job. And in Singapore and in the Asia region, it's a very vibrant and successful Global Issues Network conference. And every school has a Global Issues Network club or class or curriculum. I think this is something Singapore would be particularly into. Yes. And certainly Singapore being a, shall we say, maybe a more advantage country. Right. Surrounded by developing countries. Right. It's great for Singapore and international students to be able to visit those other countries that are so close to them and realize that these problems are not hypothetical, they're real. So, okay, you've been involved with the conference for some time. You had experience with it in Europe. You had experience with it in Singapore. Yep. Okay, now you've been in Beijing as well. Yes. Have you had experience with it there? We were the second, well, sorry, we were the first Asia international school to start gin after the European. So the Western Academy of Beijing where I was director for three years, they had the first gin conference in Asia. I don't know, I see. Now, how did Iwani school get into it? Did you take it to them or did they seek you out? So when I moved here about a year and a half ago, it was really important to me to stay connected to students. I was a little worried coming out of the school side of my career that I was going to move into a job where I was not gonna have access to students. So at the same time, HIS, Hawaiian Association of Independent Schools was looking at our mission and vision. And we kind of all decided that we should be involved with the student activities. And so I thought, why reinvent the wheel? Bring something in my suitcase that, you know, that you're never supposed to do that. You're never supposed to do those kinds of things. But I thought, this is really important. So we put together a steering committee and we happen to have a couple of people from Iwani on the steering committee. And as it became clear that gin was something people wanted to do, we needed that first volunteer school. Which school was gonna be the first school to step up and host the conference? Because HIS doesn't run the conference. The students from the host school plan, organize, and run the entire conference. So you don't wear your HIS hat when you're involved with the conference. Well, HIS is gonna continue to kind of be the umbrella organization to ensure that gin is happening year after year because this could be just another one of those good ideas that fizzles out after a year. So HIS is going to keep looking for the host school each year, teach the new host school how to run a gin conference in concert with the previous year's school. So now the conference, how long will it run? So it's going to be a Friday evening where we open the conference and we have the great Slackkey guitar musician, Scott Peterson, who is going to open the conference and dedicate a number to those amazing students. We have an incredible keynote speaker who is going to be there. His name is Ted Dintersmith, who co-wrote the book Most Lightly to Succeed and was executive producer of this movie, Most Lightly to Succeed. And he's going to encourage these students that by doing this kind of work, by serving others and solving world problems, it's gonna set them up for success. And then there are student speakers Friday night and then they're going to network and have a social event in preparation for the full day on Saturday. So this is all open to the public, I take it? It is not. It is not? No, it is not. This has been, we've been planning this for over a year. Students have to sign up for the conference. They have to have been engaged in a project in their school. Students have submitted proposals to present at the conference. And this is very much at the moment. Now, who knows what's gonna happen as we become more successful, I hope more successful, that we'll be able to open this up, film it, do some documentaries around it. Okay, who's offering the support for it? Obviously Heis, obviously Iolani School. Do you seek grants from foundations, from corporations and that sort of thing? Well, everything has to start at the beginning and you know, entrepreneurial ventures, you're kinda struggling at the beginning. So, yes, we were looking for sponsors, but I know that, and I may miss a few, but I know Foodland is sponsoring, and Whole Foods is sponsoring the food, and Heolani is sponsoring a lot of the conference, HAIS is sponsoring part of the conference. And we're not charging the students any more than just the basic costs for some help with the food cost, but this is not something where anybody's trying to make a profit. Are you getting any support from other private schools? Well, we've got about 17 schools that are at the conference. I'm really happy to say that we have charter schools and public schools are participating. Of course, once we hope this takes a hold and becomes more known to other schools, that next year we're gonna have even more participation. Because of the space at Heolani, we can only accommodate about 150 students this year. I see. So, another financial question for you. How much of a budget does it require to run something like this? Well, you know, the thing about GIN is it's all dependent on the school that agrees to host the conference. So, they incur a lot of the costs because they believe in the mission and the vision of Global Issues Network. So, this is very much about volunteerism, about stepping up. I remember back at the first conference in Luxembourg, a chewing gum company stepped up and sponsored the entire conference. But all of our speakers, our guest speakers, our keynote speakers are not charging any kind of a speakers fee. Oh, that's great. Everybody's volunteering their time. This is about ultimately ensuring that our young people see that these problems are real, that they need to be solved, that the solution to these problems ensures a better life for themselves and for their children and their children's children. So, this is all about us dedicating that time. You don't always have to dedicate money to helping others. You can also donate time. And that's what people are doing to put this conference together. It's all good. And you know, one thing I've noticed since moving to Hawaii and both independent public and charter schools really care about service work. They care about helping those less fortunate. There are so many schools here that already had that foundation of service learning, of community service and social justice. But the important thing about Global Issues Network is the network part. Our students here in Hawaii are going to realize that there are students like them all over the world dealing with these same 20 problems. And if they can all locally try to help that problem and solve that problem and deal with that problem, imagine if they know that it's happening in Asia, in Europe, in South America, that gives them hope and it gives them confidence that they can have a brighter future. Some of these connections they make will be lifelong connections, I'm sure. You know, in being an international education my whole career, I've heard story after story of Global Issues Network students arriving in college and maybe they just came from Singapore and their roommate is from Brazil and they realized they were both at Global Issues Network. That's great. And they carry on their project once they go into university. So what are the 20 key issues? Oh. Can you give us the top five? So the ones that you might imagine there's deforestation, education for all ensuring that children are being vaccinated against certain diseases, marine life issues, copyright issues. The three categories that Jin focuses on are social problems, economic problems and environmental problems. So social could be exploitation of children, a child trafficking, the homelessness problem, all kinds of issues that deal with social, economic and environmental. Very similar to the list that the UN came out with about a year ago. And our speaker on Saturday morning, Joshua Cooper is going to be speaking about, he's a humanitarian, he deals with human rights, works with the UN in New York and in Geneva and he's gonna speak to the students about basic human rights and what they can do. Great. Well, let's leave it right there for the minute. We're gonna take a break. We'll come back and we'll pick it up from there. You're watching an Asian review. I'm your host Bill Sharp. My guest today is Mr. Robert Landau. He's the executive director of the Hawaii Association for Independent Schools. He is also spearheading the Global Issues Network Conference which will be taking place at the O'Lantern School right at the end of this month. Don't go away, we'll be right back. Aloha. My name is Carl Kampanya and I'm the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Education Movers, Shakers and Reformers. I invite you to come watch our show on thinktechhawaii.com. You can also see our shows on YouTube as well. You can Google search those. I appreciate the time. I hope that you do join us as we learn about education, about the educational system here in Hawaii, what the challenges are, what the benefits are and how much our kids are learning. So thank you, hope you join us. Hi, this is Jane Sugimura. I'm the co-host for Condo Insider and we're on Think Tech Hawaii every Thursday at 3 o'clock and we're here to talk about condominium living and issues that affect condominium residents and owners and I hope you'll join us every week on Thursday. Aloha. I'm your host Bill Sharp. We've been having a discussion here today with Mr. Robert Mandel, executive director of the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools who is also spearheading the Global Issues Network Conference to be held at Iolani School right at the end of this month. Just before the break, we're talking about some of the substance of the conference itself and some of the different programs and breakout sessions and that kind of thing. So I think that's where we want to pick it up. There's, according to your promo literature, there's 14 presentations. So the conference takes different parts. First, we have the keynote speeches so that's where we're bringing in outside speakers who are in the business of helping those. They may be in a foundation. They may be motivational speakers and that's to give that global talk to the students about the need to be service leaders and to contribute to those less fortunate. And then we have what are called mentoring sessions where we have professionals from NGOs and from foundations and other organizations that will focus on deforestation and those students who are interested in deforestation will meet with that mentor who will help them become a bit more focused around how they could solve the problem that they're interested in working with. But the real beauty of the Global Issues Network are the student-led sessions. And so the students submit proposals. They may do the presentation themselves or with their mentor from their own school, their teacher, but usually it's student-led sessions that they have submitted the proposal. That proposal has been accepted by the organizing committee and they run the whole session themselves, students for students. And at the end of the day, those are always for the students the most memorable part of the conference. Do they have to write any report at the end of the conference or what kind of record is kept of the conference and what is said and what is transpired? Well, we do a lot of filming and we do a lot of note-taking. The observers and the organizers are going around taking notes. We meet with the organizing students at the end to debrief and decide around next steps. But the real important outcome of the conference is to really continue to motivate and inspire the students to continue doing what they were doing before they got there. The conference doesn't solve the problem. The conference doesn't all of a sudden get them interested in doing this kind of work. The conference is where they all come together and realize that they're not alone, that there are students like them that care deeply and profoundly. This is not about getting a credit. This isn't about their college app. This is the fact that they really believe these are serious problems that need to be solved and when they're all together, it just encourages them you've been more. They're also going to be submitting films. Yeah, I read that there's nine films that are going to be shown. And as we get over the years and we do more of these conferences, some global issues network conferences actually have a film festival because they may submit 30 films. And then we show the films that we think are the most inspiring. We have nine films for this conference. That's great. And can you give us an idea what some of these films are about? You know, to be honest, I don't know because the great thing about the conferences, I get to be as surprised as everybody else because I'm not there as the adult overseeing what's going on. I arrive and seeing the fruits of the labor of those students, they made the decisions about the films, they know what's happening and that's what I love about JIN conferences. What can these students do? And they're always surprising you and making you feel great. I sense a great teacher in you when you talk about students so much. Now, I know you're in administration now, but really good teachers have a personal affection and relationship with students and I hear that in your voice. Well, Bill, I started as a teacher. I actually started in recreation. I started in camps and I worked in camps. My whole youth and young adult life and I was a teacher for a long time. And even when I was the head of a school, 1,500 students school, I coached girls varsity and middle school softball the entire time. So you can't really know about what you're doing as an educator if you lose touch and you lose contact with students. That's really true. It's unfortunate that some administrators do lose that connection. So to be honest, when I came here into this job, I thought, oh, maybe I'm going to be even more detached from students than ever before. So when I visit schools, I carry a, it's actually called a gitileli. It's a cross between a ukulele and a guitar. Okay, a gitileli. And I take that with me when I visit schools and I'll say it to the host. Do you have any elementary kids that want to sing a silly song because I'd love to visit a classroom of students. So you're absolutely right. I don't want to lose touch with students. There is a strong sense of teacher and you're very strong. Thank you. Okay, now I'm getting back to the promo literature that I read in preparation for our chat here today. They talked about four creative submissions. What are those? Again. You haven't quite seen them yet. They're on the way. That's why they're creative. Creative and secret. And so again, I know I'm looking like I don't know what's going on, but actually in education today, when the adults know so much about what's going on, that's 20th century education. Education in the 21st century is turning education over to the students. So I actually, I know that's not great for the interview, but I actually, I'm not sure I want to know until I get to the conference so I can be surprised and just enamored with the creativity. No, I understand what you're saying. And I think probably it's probably a fair guess that students that participate in an activity like this are probably the better students to more intellectually gifted. And they don't want to be told. They don't want to be preached to. And I understand thoroughly what you're saying. The role of educators today, I think regardless of level, well, pretty much regardless of level is to sort of be a coach, be encouraging. Don't be the know it all. That's the way it's going in today's world. And not to disagree with what you said, but a lot of the students that become involved in Global Issues Network over my experience, it's not an academic award, it's not a knowledgeable, it's not a competition. It's authentic in real world and it's the cross section of students. You don't have to be the smartest student to care about others. And so these students are not just learning about the problems that they're trying to solve. They're learning about leadership and empowerment. When you're telling them, you're running this conference. And I've been to conferences before where some of the students get the timing wrong or they haven't fully decided what they're going to eat until the day before and they haven't booked the room correctly. But that's the beauty of the conference is because they learned from that. Oh, that's really interesting. Breakout sessions, what are those going to be all about? So the breakout sessions... Has that yet to be discovered? Well, I can tell you a little bit more conclusively that the breakout sessions, if you have a student who is dealing with depletion of coral off the coast of Maui, and that's the project that they, and the problem that they're trying to solve, the breakout session will be how they are trying to solve that problem. So they're going to present their project or present what it is that they do to address the problem. Students address these problems by becoming filmmakers. They do photo journals. They write blogs. They write letters to the legislature. They actually go out and volunteer. They do cleanups. There's all different ways that the students address the problem and there's no one way. They, that's again, 21st century education is about personalizing education, about ensuring that students really understand what they're passionate about, and that's the beauty of Global Issues Network. They deal with those problems in the way that motivates them and inspires them and what they're passionate about. So they could write a protest song if they were interested in music, for example. It's a great opportunity to be creative. Yes, which is so important. That's great. Because we need creative solutions to today's problems. Write a song, write a poem, or whatever. Oh, that's great. That's really great. Okay, well, we're down to maybe our last seven minutes or so here. So tell us a little bit about Heist, because a lot of yours might not be all that familiar with it. Okay, so HIS, or the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools, has actually been here for over 25 years. And I came here a year and a half ago to take over from Robert Witt, who was our executive director for 20 plus years. And we are the organization that licenses private schools in the state of Hawaii. And we also accredit private schools. And we actually worked in collaboration with the California Association of Independent Schools to develop an accreditation process that is very strategic, helps schools actually look at really the issues that are impacting the future of their school and dealing with those issues strategically through a set of standards. And so that's our licensing and accreditation side and the other side that we're really, go ahead. We have, I just wanna say, we have two and a half minutes. Okay, so I'm gonna quickly talk about our program side. Okay, sure. And besides running now a very successful teachers conference called Schools of the Future Conference, we had over 1,800 participants last October. Just from Hawaii? Yes. Wow. And from the mainland overseas. From the mainland, that's the 1,800, but that's pretty long. Oh, we're 300 more in the year, 300 year than the year before. So we're launching a brand new conference this April called Leading Schools of the Future. And it's going to be for administrators, decision makers, board members, from not just independent schools, we already have public school participants and charter school participants. And it's going to be coming together, we like again to say it's an incubator for change. What are the needs for education now in the 21st century and how can we all work together to ensure a better and brighter future for our students? Oh, that's great. That's great. And that's gonna be by the way, April 6th to 8th. Okay. And there are still places available for that conference. So that's open to the public? Well, it's certainly open to our schools, but you know, there are board members and parents who connected with schools might decide they want to participate in the conference. But primarily it's for school administrators, board members. Okay, sounds great. Sounds great. Well, you give us a lot of good information on the conference and on Heist. Unfortunately, it looks like our time is just about up. So I want to thank Mr. Mandel for joining us today and thank you for joining us. Remember that all of our episodes of Asian Review are uploaded to YouTube. You can view them there by going to YouTube and then typing in AsianReview-billsharp and then clicking the play list button. Join us next week, February 20th, when my guest will be Mr. Michael Riley, former de facto British ambassador to Taiwan who will be coming to us from London via Skype. He'll discuss the implications of Brexit for Taiwan. See you then.