A group effort

Regional Conference

The IB Latin America regional conference was held in San José, Costa Rica, from June 5 to 8, 2008.

Over the years, this conference has become a place of gathering, reflection and learning for members of the IB community in the Latin American region and this year was no exception as presentations focused on the theme of “Building a Better World” were given. 215 participants from 12 Latin American countries attended the conference and various representatives from IB World Schools presented the successful experiences they carried out in their institutions, focusing on the conference theme.

A highlight of the conference was the opening address from the vice president of Costa Rica, Laura Chinchilla, who inspired the participants with a speech written by president Oscar Arias entitled “Latin America is a Blank Canvas” in which he referred to Costa Rica as a “land of teachers” where ideas are valued more highly than weapons (since Costa Rica is a country without an army). Other highly respected speakers included the minister of Education of Ecuador, Raúl Vallejo Corral, and associate professor of teaching methods in social sciences, Isabelino Siede.

New initiatives and plans for the IB were the focus of several presentations given by IB staff; Jeffrey Beard, director general, gave a presentation on “Building a better IB for the XXI century” that sparked much debate and led to a long Q&A session with participants; Judith Fabian, academic director, led a plenary session in which she looked at new developments and raised questions about what the IB and IB World Schools should be doing to prepare students for the challenges of the 21st century.

In order to develop a helpful newsletter that meets the needs of the region’s stakeholders, communications coordinator for IB Latin America, Carolina Doncel del Oro organized two focus groups (in English and Spanish) prior to the conference, moderated by marketing and communications associate manager for IB North America, Alejandra Adán. As well as providing heads and coordinators with an opportunity to share their opinions, the team was also able to gather very useful information on those aspects of the newsletter they found useful and those that could be improved. Findings were enriching and the focus groups proved to be a valuable experience which can hopefully be repeated at other events.

Building a better IB for 2020

The IB is undergoing a transformation process in order to provide schools with a better service. In the last five years, it has doubled its size and it is foreseen that, for 2020, there will be two and a half million students and 10,000 programmes. Consequently, IB needs to change its structure to be able to address the demands of this projection.

For this purpose, we will get organized not by geographic areas but by processes.

People in charge of processes will be in 3 global centres, where, at the same time, people responsible for school networks will be located. In addition to this, these networks will have local office structures to provide the necessary services.

Global centres will be located in the following places:

• The United States (America)
• Northern continental Europe (Africa/Europe/Middle East)
• Singapore (Asia-Pacific)

Latin America will join North America to become the Americas’ network. Drew Deutsch, current regional director of IB North America, will be in charge of this geographic area and his office will be in the United States global centre. Marta Rodger, Latin America regional director, will work with Drew to define the development strategy of this new structure.

Local offices will support global centre activities as well as new and existing schools in a more focussed way. One of them will be the Buenos Aires office to which other Latin American offices will then join. They will be opened to support those schools in countries where there is a significant growth or where objectives related to IB access agenda are implemented.

Our commitment focuses on working towards the future so as to turn into a more efficient organization. We are working on the development of a structure which ensures that Latin America's needs are addressed with our customary excellence level.