Creating the world we want graphic

2020-2021 Annual Report

A Message from Our CEO

Dear World Savvy Community,

The past year has tested our community in so many ways, requiring resilience and creativity, empathy and grace. With all of the tragic ways the pandemic has continued to impact our collective experiences, it has also underscored the deep and urgent need for global competence—collaboration, critical thinking, empathy, creativity, working across difference, and so much more. It has shown us that our humanity—and ability to thrive—is interconnected at every level.

Despite, and in many ways in response to, these challenges, it was a year of growth and renewal for World Savvy—thanks to you. With your support, we’ve doubled down on reimagining an education system that centers youth agency, empowers diverse young leaders to become impactful changemakers, and re-imagines K-12 teaching and learning to build the competencies for engaged citizenship and problem solving—locally and globally—empowering youth to take charge and create the world we all want to see.

As you’ll see throughout this report, the World Savvy team continued to innovate and grow our impact. We significantly expanded the depth and breadth of programming and resources, bringing 100% of our programming online by the 2020-2021 school year, and developed new programmatic offerings that expanded our reach to date to nearly 7,000 educators and more than 800,000 students across 45 states and 32 countries.

The team also transformed our whole school partnership model to provide robust support for online cohorts of educators and leaders within our partner schools. This has enabled us to work in virtual, hybrid, and in-person environments as necessary while delivering the same high quality of services—ensuring our partner schools and districts are able to deeply integrate global competence at every level of K-12 teaching, learning, and culture. We are building a world where all students have more of what they deserve, and see themselves as agents of change in a global community. It’s a world that values every student’s background, passions, talents, and interests—and centers those in their learning.

The growth of World Savvy’s virtual programming capabilities that breaks down geographic barriers, increased breadth, depth, and quality of our programming, and generous investments in organizational capacity and excellence over the past year have positioned us well to achieve our ambitious Vision 2035: to engage a network of 10,000 K-12 schools in diverse geographies across the US, reaching an estimated 5 million students. This will ensure that we reach a critical mass in this work by 2035 that changes discourse across the country about what constitutes a quality education—that helps all kids thrive and become engaged citizens and changemakers in their communities.

All of this was only possible because of the people who power this movement. Our growing staff, network of amazing partners, school leaders, educators and students, and our donors and supporters. Your individual commitments to this work make all of this possible, and is the key to World Savvy’s continued growth and impact in the coming years.

Today, despite all of the challenges and even heartache of the past year, I am looking ahead with hope and excitement. The big challenges of our time—climate strife, health crises, reckoning with injustice and inequity—have started important conversations around what is necessary to meet this moment. They have spurred creativity, generosity, and increased collaboration toward solving big problems. And they have highlighted the importance of encouraging and supporting youth as engaged citizens and changemakers in their communities.

Thank you for being a part of this movement. Together, we are creating the world we want to see.

With Gratitude,
Dana Mortenson

“The past year has been one of the most disruptive and challenging in our history. As we confront multiple pandemics in every corner of the world, from health crises, to racial inequity, to climate change, and more, we know that World Savvy’s work is urgently needed to meet this moment.”

– Dana Mortenson, Co-founder and CEO of World Savvy

Our Mission

World Savvy educates and engages youth to learn, work, and thrive as responsible global citizens.

Our Vision

World Savvy envisions a K-12 education system that prepares all students with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions for success and active engagement in the global community.

World Savvy’s Vision 2035

BY 2035, WORLD SAVVY’S GOAL IS TO ENGAGE A NETWORK OF 10,000 K12 SCHOOLS IN DIVERSE GEOGRAPHIES ACROSS THE US, REACHING AN ESTIMATED 5 MILLION STUDENTS.

We will leverage the learning and impact in this network of schools to change the discourse nationally on what constitutes a ‘quality’ education. We are creating a future-ready K12 system that deeply and equitably prepares young people for life as engaged citizens, thriving professionals, and global problem solvers.

KEY AREAS OF FOCUS ON THE PATH TO 10K SCHOOLS

Global Engagement

To continue our learning and leadership in the field of global competence in education, it is vital to deepen partnerships across the globe.

Post Secondary Collaboration

We will build out the network of higher education partners embedding this into practice, and position them to champion reform in teacher preparation.

Strategic Partnerships

Expanding our geographic and programmatic impact will require engaging partners from across sectors: nonprofit, research and corporate partners.

Research + Evaluation + Field Building

We will invest resources in deepening our research and evaluation to contribute to field building, to shift the discourse on what constitutes a quality education in the US.

GROWTH IN WORLD SAVVY SCHOOL PARTNERSHIPS

In FY22, we are launching the Vision 2035 Fund to fund the infrastructure and support for significant growth over the next decade – powering a movement across sectors and stakeholders to re-imagine education for a diverse and interconnected world. This is a five year campaign engaging our diverse community in building the future of this work.

With strategic investments in staff growth and increased earned income year-over-year, World Savvy conservatively anticipates building a thriving network of 10,000 school partners by FY33. This will ensure that we reach a critical mass in this work by 2035 that changes discourse across the country about what constitutes a quality education—that helps all kids thrive and become engaged citizens and changemakers in their communities.

“During these past 5 years, World Savvy has helped me guide my students through a variety of student led projects…the result has been student empowerment. This has happened through their discovery that their own lives are expressions of the very concept, values, behaviors and skills found in the Global Competence Matrix.”

– Daniel Aamot, World Savvy Educator, Minneapolis, MN

Our Approach

The world is changing, and educators need the freedom and the resources to help our systems of learning change along with it. We can only rise to meet our biggest challenges if our students learn to think through complex problems, and design solutions from a global perspective. It is crucial that students learn the skills needed to thrive in a connected globe. Problem-solving, comfort with ambiguity, collaboration, empathy, critical thinking — all are essential tools in today’s global knowledge economy. And a big part of educational equity is ensuring all students have access to those tools.

Through our partnerships with districts and schools, and through our work with talented, dedicated educators and school leaders, World Savvy integrates global competence into student learning.

World Savvy is building a world where all students have more of what they deserve, and see themselves as agents of change in a global community. It’s a world that values every student’s background, passions, talents, and interests — and centers those in their learning.

808900

Students Reached

6836

Educators Reached

States Reached

Countries Reached

What is Global Competence?

Reveal Answer

World Savvy defines global competence as the knowledge, attitudes, skills, and behaviors necessary to navigate and succeed in today’s interconnected world. Globally competent individuals:

Understand globally significant issues
Practice empathy
Appreciate cultural differences
Understand and consider multiple perspectives
Use critical and comparative thinking
Problem solve collaboratively
Are lifelong learners

Back to Question

“The importance of a globally competent person covers your social-emotional side. It’s being trauma sensitive. It’s being ready for the changing world that we live in. It’s being able to connect and build relationships with anyone that you meet. And it’s really about building empathy which the world needs more right now.”

– Cindy Derrane, Assistant Principal, Norwood High School, Norwood, MA

What We Do

In increasingly diverse, interconnected, and complex communities, students need global competence to be prepared for learning, work, and life. World Savvy is building the capacity of the next generation to adapt and thrive in a world of change.

We accomplish this critical work through partnerships with:

Our Commitment to Equity

At World Savvy, we believe there is a direct connection between prioritizing global competence and centering equity. This work helps schools more equitably serve all students, and create environments that honor and elevate their identities and perspectives as assets in learning. And this approach goes beyond the classroom: It helps students of all identities prepare themselves to succeed in the modern global economy and as active community members. Education should reflect and grapple with the reality of students’ lived experiences, connect them to issues and topics they care about, and prepare them to do something about those ideas — while in school, after graduation, and throughout their lives.

Advancing this mission every day, year after year, requires work. Individual and collective work to build empathy, cross-cultural communication and collaboration skills, appreciation and respect for multiple perspectives and differences, and critical thinking that demands that we interrogate long standing assumptions and entrenched beliefs; both in ourselves, and reflected by and enshrined in the systems all around us. To confront how systemic injustice and white supremacy have shaped institutions, blocked progress and often warped our understanding of the most consequential issues impacting our communities and our country.

Toward that end, we are committed to constant reflection, learning, and work to ensure that, as we grow, diversity, equity, inclusion and justice are central to how we do this important work. We are committed to:

- Engaging in honest and dynamic discourse on diversity, equity, inclusion and justice;
- Rigorously examining our practices, learning to recognize how our organization perpetuates inequitable norms, and establishing decision-making and operational expectations that firmly act in opposition to inequity;
- Identifying and supporting partners in the communities where we work, and where systemic racism has had extraordinarily adverse impacts, and centering their voices in our decision making;
- Cultivating an inclusive working environment in which every employee feels comfortable expressing their full identity and are supported by leadership.

While we recognize and affirm that this work is not and can never be a list to check off, we affirm the importance of accountability and transparency in this work. This is why we share that, over the past year, World Savvy has done the following to advance our commitment to center Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice in our work:

Diversifying staff and consultants
- Staff diversity increased from 33% to 43% BIPOC
- All new operations consultants identified as BIPOC, women, and/or immigrants
- Board diversity increased by 10% and we are on track to meet our 50% BIPOC goal in FY22
Engaged our Board in the Intercultural Development Index (IDI)
Led multiple book studies around equity, including one for the Board of Directors, and expanded our Program Team’s individual and collective learning around DEIJ
Significantly increased budget allocations for DEIJ work
Engaged our whole team in a 21 Days of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice Challenge from The Winters Group
Prepared for the launch of a DEIJ Task Force comprised of staff to guide work for the organization in FY22 + FY23
Built infrastructure to track DEIJ efforts internally and at the board level, enriched staff data collection around inclusion and engagement

In 2022, we will be sharing our DEIJ statement and tools to transparently track our progress against these goals, via our website. We welcome and anticipate feedback from our community as we continue to deepen our own learning and develop accountability mechanisms, and appreciate every opportunity to learn and grow.

“The youths, especially, learned a lot. The youths from Rochester actually are working on their own projects that they are going to extend or build it, and also the youths in Faribault are so excited and gaining so many skills from the leadership program.”

– Sharif Hared, Executive Director of the Somali Community Resettlement Services, Minneapolis, MN

This Year

When the 2020-21 school year began, we had no idea what to expect. We had just come out of one of the most unprecedented years ever, with disruptions and challenges in education and the wider world we hadn’t imagined. Thanks to the incredible support of donors and funders over the previous summer, we entered the new school year fully equipped to conduct all World Savvy programming virtually, and to support educators and students whatever the new school year brought. The demand was incredible, and we were so grateful to be in a place to meet it.

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