World Language Center: Education for Global Citizenship
The mission of the World Language Center is to promote global citizenship through the cultivation of foreign language ability and multicultural competence.
The World Language Center shall provide programs for developing foreign language skills. Moreover, because the role of global citizens extends to action that contributes to the cause of happiness and peace, the programs and environment of the Center shall be designed to foster in students a sense of social awareness and responsibility which transcends national and cultural boundaries.
Soka University’s founder, Daisaku Ikeda, has associated the following attributes with global citizenship:
the wisdom to perceive the interconnectedness of all life;
the courage not to fear or deny difference, but to respect and strive to understand people of different cultures and to grow from encounters with them;
the compassion to maintain an imaginative empathy that reaches beyond one’s immediate surroundings and extends to those suffering in distant places.
To nurture such attributes, the World Language Center shall be a place for connecting with the world, celebrating the richness of its diverse cultures, and transcending borders through understanding and friendship.
3 May 1999