Last week a delegation from RCN attended a conference at our sister college, UWC Adriatic, and then the two day UWC Congress in Trieste.

Our Deputy Rektor, Alistair Robertson, co-led the conference held at UWCAD for education specialists and students from all sixteen colleges. The focus points included discussion on the UWC Educational Model and the education pages of the draft UWC strategic plan – the feedback from staff and students will be passed onto the UWC International Office.

On the same evening, there was an event / opening reception at the main conference centre. 30 RCN alumni had registered for the Congress (with many of them representing National Committees) – we invited them by letter to join the RCN delegation at the
opening reception and we thoroughly enjoyed connecting with them.

Sven Mollekleiv, President of the Norwegian Red Cross, delivered an outstanding keynote speech to launch the Congress under the title of ‘Why the World Needs UWC’. He received a standing ovation from over 500 delegates. We could not have hoped for a more relevant and thoughtful start to the event which fully underlines the value of the shared mission we have with the Red Cross..

Later that day, the RCN team ran a 90 minute workshop on the theme of ‘deliberate diversity and inclusion’ in tandem with the Waterford Kamhlaba delegation. Please click here for Rektor Richard Lamont’s introduction to the session. Students Mohammed Swadi Al-Bazoon (Iraq) and Tess Luttikhuis (the Netherlands) made important contributions to the success of this workshop and contributed to a student-led session on the UWC of their dreams on the final afternoon.

The Congress focused on three streams: Education, National Committees and Strategy.

It proved to be a great opportunity for connecting with RCN alumni, our colleagues at other colleges, our partners representing NCs, and many others.

A huge thank you to our Board and Council members who made it to the Congress for their contributions and ongoing support of our College.

And finally, well done to the International Office and UWC Adriatic teams for designing and implementing a superb programme which lasted over a week and included council, congress and the international board meeting.