2019 was the year in which we worked across many borders – both real and imagined – including institutional ones, in our common, global endeavour for an education for freedom, focused on the growing child and young person and the becoming human being. Then, in 2020, came a major setback that persists. This health crisis has, at times, been accompanied by a narrowing of perspectives to the immediate periphery. In many countries the Corona crisis became an existential threat to Waldorf kindergartens, Waldorf schools and therapeutic education institutions. An important support was the Joint Action: Corona Aid, through which the Friends of Waldorf Education and the German Waldorf School Movement, along with many donors, foundations and organisations, provided active help and demonstrated practical worldwide solidarity.
This common consciousness is also the theme of the new website, SteinerWaldorf.World. We want to use Waldorf 100 to connect and continue to make the worldwide network of Waldorf institutions more visible. SteinerWaldorf.World will be the first shared home page for all internationally active Waldorf organisations.
The central and connecting element of SteinerWaldorf.World is an interactive world map. We invite all Waldorf schools, Waldorf kindergartens, educational seminars, national associations, as well as therapeutic education and social therapy institutions, to introduce themselves and their work on this ‘world map’. In this way we will take up one of the most important elements of Waldorf 100 – the call and the gesture to “join in!” At the same time the diversity of Waldorf education will be visible.
The website is the result of the collaboration of Waldorf2019 e. V. (i.L.) with Freunde der Erziehungskunst (Friends of Waldorf Education) in cooperation with international Waldorf organisations such as the Educational Section at the Goetheanum, the International Forum for Steiner/Waldorf Education (Hague Circle), Steiner Education Australia, the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America (AWSNA), the International Association for Steiner Waldorf Early Childhood Education (IASWECE) and the European Council for Steiner/Waldorf Education (ECSWE).
The initiator of SteinerWaldorf.World is Henning Kullak-Ublick, who already emphasised the diversity and internationality of the Waldorf community in 2019 as the then board member of the German Federation of Waldorf Schools and the person responsible for the anniversary celebrations. About SteinerWaldorf.World he says: "Waldorf education has long since become a worldwide impulse with many thousands of institutions on all continents. They all work in a wide variety of cultural, political, geographical and socio-economic settings to enable children and young people to lead lives that are self-determined and shaped by an interest in their fellow human beings, in nature and in the tasks they want to shape as adults. With the new website, we have for the first time created a common platform for all Waldorf educational institutions worldwide, which we hope and expect will intensify cooperation and exchange across all borders."
More information can be found at: www.steinerwaldorf.world