Mission The mission of the Global Village School is to help teenage survivors of war acquire the education necessary to succeed in life and to fulfill their dreams.
Vision Our vision is to create a broad-based community of participants and supporters to provide refugee teens with the tools and life skills they need to become educated citizens and to bring leadership skills to the 21st century.
Who We Are
The GVS community embraces young refugee women and their families, their teachers and staff, volunteers from high schools, local colleges and the many members of the general public who believe in the school’s mission.
We Are All Learners. We know that the way to educate young refugee women is to welcome them into a learning community based on respectful and caring relationships. GVS is built on the strength of such relationships. We are often asked why GVS is a joyful, peaceful and positive place when the students have suffered incredible loss and continue to face incredible challenges. The answer is found in the relationships formed and nurtured around the students. It is found in learning together and from each other: when learning goes in two directions, when the teacher learns as much as the student, when the volunteer who comes to help accepts with gratitude the cultural riches gained from the students.
We Cross Boundaries. In view of the school’s international character and the young women’s history as refugees, we celebrate cultural difference and ease the transition into American culture and English language. Because the school attracts a large number of volunteers with diverse talents, the school is able to live beyond the school day and outside the boundaries of a traditional school curriculum, reaching into the local community for resources and friends. The goal is to make the learning inside school relate smoothly and coherently with living in the community outside.
We Work With Student Choices and Goals. The students at GVS are taught to develop their capacities for informed choice. We admit the newly arrived who want to work hard. From the moment of admission to the school, the GVS community--the staff, the teachers, the volunteers and the students--work together to develop an educational plan that is both realistic and meaningful for each student, her life and her aspirations. This will mean going on to high school for one student, college for another, a GED or meaningful employment for another. We work with our students to mold and refine their educational plans, and we educate them as to the next steps after GVS in achieving these plans or acquiring employment.
We are a single sex school, drawing much of our confidence and seriousness from this status. We start with our experience and value the experience of all who enter our doors. We work through building consensus and coalitions, sharing work and responsibility, learning to trust ourselves and others, and we take educating our students to be agents in the world extremely seriously. We cannot forget that our students’ experiences as refugees and women have not always been positive. At GVS they are strengths.
