Jackie Ehlers is an award-winning global educator, community organizer, and human rights advocate who has lived and worked in Africa, Europe and North America. She has taught students from over 100 countries in every age group from preschool through college. She has taught in public and private schools, including Muslim, Jewish, and both Catholic and Protestant Christian schools. She has led teacher training and other educational training programs, seminars, workshops, demonstrations, and exhibits internationally and throughout the United States. She has also led numerous corporate training programs, and founded a business that led many training programs for both management and personnel in corporations.
Jackie’s own family is a reflection of her commitment that “we’re all in this world together.” She and her late husband have both biological and adopted children, and have created a multi-ethnic family that now represents Asia, Africa, Europe, North and South America.
Jackie has inspired and created international organizations, musical and theatrical productions and events, radio and television programs, national laws, corporate training programs, seminars, teacher training activities, and a wide range of curriculum materials for all ages. She co-founded World Awareness, Inc., designed to promote global awareness and global citizenship through activities and products (including educational board games such as
Where in the World, which creates a non-threatening learning environment by which players build upon their geographical knowledge and increase their world awareness of countries and the world regions where they belong, and then progress through learning about the distribution of natural resources, languages and religions of differing countries to eventually being able to tie the knowledge of geography to current events). She also co-founded Global Leadership Network, committed to generating Transformational Global Leadership through leadership coaching, organizational consulting, transformational training programs and guided opportunities for global leadership experience in order to develop, nurture, and support leaders with a global vision.
Jackie is currently engaged in promoting awareness of and commitment to the fulfillment of the
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, centered around social inclusion, environmental sustainability and globally inclusive economic development. She is living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA and teaches English as a Second Language at Santa Fe Community College. She celebrated her 80th birthday in October, 2014.
Five Questions with Jackie Ehlers
What Makes You Come Alive?
Transforming the conversations of the world from Us vs.Them to Were All in this World Together!<br />Expanding each of our worlds to include all of humanity.
Pivotal turning point in your life?
A life transformed in the snow:<br /> When I was nine years old (during World War II in 1943) I was lying in the snow, making a snow angel and meditating about the astronomy I was learning at school. I pictured a Martian looking at the Earth, thinking, Why do those earthlings think that humans are different from each other because the sun gives their skin many shades of color, or because they live on different sides of imaginary lines they draw on their maps of their world?<br /> I also pondered the fact that I was reading The Jungle Book written by a man about a boy, and yet I could totally picture myself as Mowgli, the hero of the book. This made me consider the myth of the great unbridgeable difference between males and females of the human species. How would the Martian view that?<br /> By the time I got up from the snow I had decided that I would live my life from the truth that all humans were just that: human earthlings living together in this world.
An Act of Kindness You'll Never Forget?
The act of kindness that stands out in my mind took place during a two-day stop in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania (while moving our family of seven from Zambia to the U.S.). Our 10 month old baby had a seizure in the middle of the night in a rest house where there were no other people around. We went out into the street with her, and two Tanzanian men stopped their car and asked us what was wrong. They not only drove us to the hospital eight miles away, but they came back to the hospital the next day to find out how she was doing, and if we needed anything. Their incredible kindness could very well have saved our daughters life!
One Thing On Your Bucket List?
Completing the book about my vision for the world, and inspiring people to work together as a global community for the fulfillment of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (to be adopted in September 2015), centered around social inclusion, environmental sustainability, and globally inclusive economic development.
One-line Message for the World?
We’re All in this World Together