Why It’s Important to Collaborate

April 22, 2022
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In March, many education consultants gathered in person at the MK Education Summit near Atlanta or joined us virtually from wherever they serve around the globe. It felt good to be together to share information and fellowship.

In past years, this group was known as IMKEC (International MK Education Consortium) and was focused mainly on helping consultants serving with North American agencies as they tried to increase the awareness and importance of supporting their families with education concerns and issues. We especially wanted agency leaders to understand and implement policies and practices that help families but also reduce attrition and promote better care.

This conference isn’t owned by any one group. It is a gathering of like minds wanting to move our field forward and learn from each other…iron sharpening iron!

More recently, IMKEC has transitioned to MKES, as the group has expanded beyond agency consultants to anyone whose role is in supporting cross-cultural families educationally.

This year’s focus was on understanding the characteristics of generations and how best to serve parents from many generations. Our main speaker, Andrew McPeak, from Growing Leaders gave us good info and we spent time interacting on how to apply that information to our contexts as global consultants. Here are some comments from those sessions:

“…loved the discussions about cross-generational consulting and ways to engage genZ. Love the networking and the resource sharing.”
“Learning about how to better work with the Gen Zs was so very insightful and helpful!”
“It’s not just me :) [Some generations] aren’t good at communicating, so need to find creative ways to get families to respond.”
“Greater understanding of the importance of understanding basic/general characteristics of younger generations, in order to better mentor, coach, and learn from them.”

In addition, we had workshops on changes happening in American universities, embedding social/emotional learning into the curriculum and emerging needs relating to the pandemic and other stressors in our world. We talked about how to assist new sending countries and left with a plan to work on some ways to contribute.

In general, attendees left feeling encouraged and better-equipped for their work. Here are a few final comments:

“It is wonderfully energizing to get together and brainstorm with others who share a passion for tcks and their families.”
“Awareness of the essential role of relationship building before info dissemination for the next generations.”
“I very much appreciated the sense of care for the TCK emotional/mental/social issues, as well as the generational differences with the parents.”
“Loved that the schedule had space for conversation, networking, not too packed.”
“Thank you so much for making it available virtually or I could not have attended. I’ve never attended these before, and am the MK Advisor, not Education consultant, for our mission. However, I am expected to cover educational issues as well. Talking with the breakout session “gen x” group was VERY affirming and helpful.”
“Very impressed and professional!”

Plan on joining this group for the 2023 conference! Details and dates will be announced in the coming months.