For the past two years, the coalition has been working towards its vision of a society in which everyone has the skills, opportunity and desire to actively contribute to the betterment of the community. This year, we have added a number of new stakeholders to the coalition as we work to make our membership representative of the local context. It is inspiring to see such a diverse community come together and champion an approach rooted in inclusion, equity and civic engagement. Collective impact is a model that responds to the community it serves and is iterative in nature, so as we move through this process, we are constantly learning from one another and our community, and adapting accordingly.

The initial phase of the process was rooted in trust-building, community connection, and creating a safe space to engage in authentic dialogue about what we all share a passion for: educational reform. Within that communal work, we then moved to mapping shared definitions, values, our common agenda and, finally, defining the characteristics and skills of the student we want to see emerge from our education system. In the past year and a half, we have been asking the questions “How do we get there?”, “How do we know we got there?” “Are we including everyone who needs to be in the conversation?” 

In 2021, the coalition’s four original think tanks (Transformative Education, Student Engagement, Inclusion and Research and Policy) worked together online, conducting over a dozen meetings to align measurements and strategies. Think Tanks also worked independently to finalize their pilot initiatives aimed to realize the high-level goals set by the coalition. These initiatives have included the design of a pedagogical model promoting critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity, that can be easily adapted and applied across non-formal or formal educational settings; the development of a cross-school podcast on environmental sustainability; a mapping project aiming to identify the main challenges faced by students with disabilities within the public and private educational sectors; and the development of culturally appropriate measurement tools for assessing social emotional learning. What really sets apart this coalition’s work is the leading role being played by students themselves: it is exciting to see high school students conducting the research and designing initiatives with and for their peers while working as colleagues with the professors, teachers, consultants and others in their working groups.

More recently, UNICEF’s Kuwait Representative and Early Childhood Development Chief joined the coalition and began mobilizing a new Think Tank focused on Early Childhood Education (ECE), hosting initial meet-ups with public and private stakeholders working in different areas related to ECE, early childhood development and intervention, health and nutrition, as well as parent outreach. UNICEF has also shared their newly developed, bilingual teacher training curriculum with our members to use as a resource. The curriculum is focused on supporting teachers and students return to offline school and deal with the learning loss experienced through the pandemic. The coalition looks forward to hosting more collaborative workshops and projects in this field.

In Spring 2021 we also launched our fireside chats, a series of informal dialogues with educational innovators. The fireside chats are a way to create a community of practice, connecting the coalition with people locally, regionally and internationally working to promote similar values, models and learnings. Our guest speakers to date have included practitioners and experts in early childhood education, the compassionate systems framework, and teaching literature and writing through a student-centered, dynamic, and culturally relevant pedagogy. en.v, as the backbone of the coalition, was also invited to conduct a workshop at the Ninth Biannual Gulf Comparative Education Society Conference held in March 2021. The interactive session introduced conference participants to the collective impact model, using our coalition as a case study, and exploring which components of the model might be successfully implemented across other G.C.C. countries.