At 16, my entire perspective of the rest of the world came merely from the television and computer screens. But I wanted to know more. I was a little too used to my good old comfort zone, so the possibility of stepping out of it to experience something new and exciting simply intrigued me.
In 2010, I was granted a full scholarship to attend Lester B Pearson UWC of the Pacific, thousands of miles away from home on the west coast of Canada. I was heading towards spending the last two years of my school life with 199 other passionate individuals from all corners of the globe. I was about to begin the best two years of my life.
Pearson College was a life changing experience. It was a place where everyone had a voice that mattered. The aim was to make education a force to unite people, cultures and nations for peace and a sustainable future, and the whole concept fascinated me. By the end of my two years, I’d had roommates from Greece, Nigeria, Palestine, Bulgaria and Canada. The classes felt like global conferences and each new day was a new adventure. During meals, the whole world would be present under one roof, and the conversations we had knew no boundaries. I got to travel, explore my creative capacities, serve the community and become a true global citizen. I made some of my best friends in those two years, and today there are hardly any countries in the world where I don’t have a second home to lodge in.
The two brief years changed me completely as a person and drastically altered my perspectives about the world. The same world that seemed so big and mysterious just two years prior to my graduation had become my new comfort zone.
United World College (UWC) was founded in 1962 with the aim to unite the youth whose experience was of the political conflict of the cold war era. The movement’s purpose was and has continued to be to offer an educational experience based on shared learning, collaboration and understanding so that the students would act as champions of peace. While remaining committed to this goal even today, five decades since its inception, the movement has expanded its reach to embrace the tensions and conflicts existing within as well as between societies.
UWC has 12 schools and colleges, and its education has its roots in shared guiding principles. UWC short programmes offer a condensed UWC experience and take UWC’s mission and values to a wider audience. UWC schools, college and programmes all have distinctive characters yet share the same themes of UWC’s mission and values.
The movement depends on the dedication and expertise of an active volunteer based network called national committees. National committees (NCs) operate in more than 140 countries to recruit, including Bangladesh.
The Bangladeshi National Committee is run by a dedicated team of teachers, philanthropists and professors from various prestigious institutions. Today, there are at least 100 students who have gone from Bangladesh, and the National Committee here is dedicated to keep promoting the movement even further among Bangladeshis.
