Plan of Action

The Friends of Healdtown In North America will:

1. Provide assistance to the school in its task of producing graduates who, it is hoped, will commit themselves wherever and whenever possible to the following common themes:  

•  local capacity building

• leadership development

• professional development

• re-orientation of the "who" and "how" in local  decision-making  

2. Fund-raise to provide the financial stability to undertake the re-establishment of the residential component and its related programs in the school. The strength and effectiveness of Healdtown was always reinforced by the kinds of activities that were promoted and enthusiastically engaged in by the students in the constructive atmosphere of the residency.
3. Identify and encourage professional individuals, active or retired, to share their knowledge, skills, and expertise with the community of staff and students in order to advance learning at Healdtown.
4. Identify and encourage organizations, institutions, and corporations to help provide needed resources to carry out the educational programs.
5. Develop partnerships and relationships with North American schools and related institutions for the purpose of promoting cultural exchanges through sponsored excursions.

RATIONALE

Experience has shown that in education, the interaction that takes place in an environment of studying, living, playing, and working together, provides incalculable opportunities for the development of positive values such as loyalty, cooperation, caring, focus, and ambition in young people. Healdtown will provide those opportunities.

Programs will satisfy the needs of today’s communities and include both the speculative and the practical in the arts and sciences. To some extent, and  regardless of ultimate goals, all students will be exposed to these in order to help them develop an understanding of and appreciation for the lofty and the prosaic in human existence.

Programs will be presented whenever possible through the use of available technological tools such as the computer.

In linguistic communication, rudimentary study of any one or more of a selected group of foreign languages will be encouraged, at least at the conversational level. It is hoped that this approach will motivate each student to develop proficiency in the chosen language. The advantage and joy to be derived from interacting comfortably with people of different nations and cultures, in their own languages, cannot be over- stated.

Athletics, music and drama, traditional mainstays in the social climate of Healdtown, would feature prominently as part of the activities in which all students would engage.

Deep moral and spiritual values governing the life of the community of staff and students, would be evident in their daily interactions.