-
What We Do
- WHERE WE WORK
-
About Us
Welcome Message from Carol Jenkins, CEO
World Learning believes that the best hope for peace, justice, and sustainability lies in bringing people together. Through cultural immersion, experiential learning, and information sharing, our programs equip others to collaboratively address the most pressing issues of our time.
Throughout my years at World Learning, I have had the fortunate opportunity to meet with many of our participants, partners, and alumni—a global network of learners. Our programs help them understand other cultures, master new skills, and cultivate networks. Our teaching and training methodologies empower them to find locally relevant, sustainable, and implementable solutions. Our approaches emphasize flexibility and adaptability that help them tackle real-world problems. They, in turn, make extraordinary changes in their lives and communities.
Please join us—and those we work with and serve around the world—in our pursuit to create a brighter and better future for all.
Carol Jenkins | CEO, World Learning
Allen Cutler | Chair, Board of Trustees - Get Involved
Media Center > Story
How The Experiment Inspired This White House ‘Champion of Change’
March 1, 2016
Dorothy Stoneman’s journey to the frontlines of the Civil Rights Movement can be traced back to an eye-opening experience in France in 1959. As a member of a World Learning Experiment cohort, Stonemen credits the experience with expanding her worldview and exposing her to an array of perspectives outside of her own.
Stoneman, who was named by the White House as a “Champion of Change” in 2012, recalls her decision to join New York’s Harlem Action Group as one that ultimately would go against the grain within the movement. As most of her white peers headed south to get involved in activism, she decided to enact change within a community not in the headlines through education and advocacy.
“I learned to use my privilege in a way that was accountable to the community and embedded in it,” she said. “The white folks who went south tended to overwhelm the movement with their point of view.”
Stoneman began her career as a public school teacher, and then became director of a community-based, parent-controlled daycare center and elementary school. In addition to her role as an educator, Stoneman turned her focus to breaking the cycle of crime and poverty through suitable living solutions within her neighborhood.
In the 1970s, Stoneman’s students told her they wanted to rehabilitate empty neighborhood houses that attracted crime, which inspired her to found YouthBuild USA. The program helps low-income people aged 16 to 24 earn their GEDs or high school diplomas, learn job skills, and serve their communities by building affordable and increasingly green units of housing.
According to the Stoneman, there are still pressing civil rights issues that resonate from her time as a teacher in Harlem. She remains determined to advocate for closing gaps within the education system and finding solutions to address the disproportionate number of people of color in prison.
“The dominant culture needs to invest in opportunities for education, job training, employment, and service for young people born into poverty,” she said.