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Since the creation of J-WEL in May 2017, J-WEL has welcomed a diverse group of organizations into our membership. Today, we are pleased to announce our initial members in an MIT News feature. Our members span six continents and 12 countries. They include prominent NGOs, universities across the globe, and top companies.
The Collaboratives
Our pK-12 Collaborative, under the direction of professors Angela Belcher and Eric Klopfer, has a growing list of members, including the Hong Kong-based nonprofit Catalyst Education Lab, Save the Children, educational technology company EnglishHelper (United States), Australia’s Queensland University of Technology (QUT), and the Wadah Foundation (Indonesia). Some of pK-12's focus areas include STEM, teacher learning, early childhood, and computational thinking.
The Higher Education Collaborative, led by faculty director Professor Hazel Sive, has been joined by members from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. These include Ahmadu Bello University (Nigeria), Covenant University (Nigeria), Seikei University (Japan), Universidad de los Andes (Colombia), Universidad Mayor (Chile), University of São Paulo (Brazil), and the University of The Bahamas. Faculty from several members of the Higher Education Collaborative recently joined us for our Curriculum Design and High-Impact Research Workshops this July. Professor Sylvio Canuto, University of São Paulo’s Research Provost and membership coordinator, describes his university’s motivation for involvement: “USP has joined J-WEL due to MIT´s long history of excellence and due to the great opportunities that arise from being part of a global program that aims to tackle the great challenge of enhancing education.”
Members joining the Workplace Learning Collaborative, which is led by Sloan Principal Research Scientist George Westerman, include Intelligent Machines Lab and other companies. Workplace Learning members are working with J-WEL to identify skills that will be required in the workforce of the future as a result of new developments in AI, demographic trends, globalization, and other factors. The Collaborative will also be looking at the impact of learning, EdTech, and other areas related to the future of work.
A global impact
“Each collaborative is taking a unique approach to engaging with its members to define and explore educational challenges and opportunities that can have global impact,” says M.S. Vijay Kumar, Associate Dean for Digital Learning and J-WEL’s Executive Director, in discussing J-WEL’s first year. “We’re thrilled to have this remarkable group of organizations working with us.”
J-WEL is an initiative of MIT and Community Jameel, the social enterprise organization founded by MIT alumnus Mohammed Jameel ‘78. Community Jameel was established in 2003 to continue the Jameel family's tradition of supporting the community, a tradition started in the 1940s by the late Abdul Latif Jameel, founder of the Abdul Latif Jameel business, who throughout his life helped tens of thousands of disadvantaged people in the fields of healthcare, education, and improving livelihoods.
"The high caliber of the organizations that have joined J-WEL, and the speed with which they have come on board, is testament to the impact that J-WEL has made in such a short space of time," says Fady Jameel, President of Community Jameel International. "The different members will bring wide-ranging insights to the table at the pulsating meetings of J-WEL Weeks and other events -- but they are unified by their commitment to discovering and sharing innovative approaches to learning, and applying them in the real world."
Interested in joining us on our journey to transform education? Learn more about becoming a J-WEL member.