Board President’s Reflections

11/5/21—What, after all, is in a letter?

In her welcoming remarks at the most recent Virtual Educating Girls Symposium, Megan Murphy shared the NCGS Board of Trustees decision to reposition NCGS as a global organization. This includes right naming the coalition by dropping the letter “N” and replacing it with an “I.” In this case, the letter “I” amounts to over 95% of the world’s population, and for the moment no less than 28% of NCGS’ member schools. Both to reflect its current membership and programming more accurately and also to best position itself for future opportunity, the letter “I” in the International Coalition of Girls’ School is both our destination and our newest starting point.

The NCGS Board of Trustees is proud to stand with Megan and the NCGS Team at this threshold moment.

Bridge building has been a critical part of NCGS’ DNA since the very beginning and cultivating global connections through programs such as the Global Forum on Girls’ Education and the Global Action Research Collaborative has long been central to our work as a coalition.

NCGS trustees advanced this notion when we met in person to engage in long-term strategic visioning in January 2020, just before everything changed everywhere.

Six months and a lifetime later, the Board met again in June 2020. Global challenges and international opportunities no longer took the form of an abstract, or even a set of programs between and among individual schools. The moral imperative to connect, advance and advocate for all girls everywhere remained, but now a pandemic took a more slow-moving global arc for NCGS and it accelerated its pace and its need. Suddenly, there was a more evident on-the-ground, pragmatic-minded necessity to this work.

It was within that context that the NCGS trustees approved a vision that has been shared before, but perhaps worth reiterating again now: We are united in elevating women’s leadership worldwide by educating and empowering our students to be ethical, globally minded changemakers. When looked at now, substituting an “I” for an “N” amounts to nothing less than putting into action our earlier call for a more ethical, globally minded coalition. And, while national dialogues will always serve a critical role in supporting educators, global connectivity provides the combustible energy that lifts regional discussion to new heights, new places and better possibilities for the greater good of the girls we serve. The International Coalition of Girls’ Schools will generate an even greater and formidable network of strategic resource sharing. Quite simply, it is the way forward in this era.

It is important to indicate that there are many among us, me included, who have loved our “N.” For three decades NCGS has provided access to highly relevant regional resources, yet in today’s world, we also need increasing global value from our membership in this coalition. Herein lies our great opportunity.

The shared cause that unites our coalition originates from the core strength of girls’ schools to advance our cause via the sharing of knowledge and the building of relationships.

Girls’ schools have maintained and enhanced their utility by seeing opportunity in historical moments of uncertainty. We have done so because our doing so has clearly been in the best interest of the changemakers who learn and lead in our schools every day. Embracing our “I” and all that it can mean for girls’ schools everywhere is merely today’s opportunity, and it is both new and fully in line with who we are, who we have been, and who we can be.

Paul Burke, President of the NCGS Board of Trustees and Head of The Nightingale-Bamford School