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Black males often are raised in poverty, exposed to violence and toxic environments that create different levels of trauma that can cause social emotional problems which lead to mental health problems. These problems along with a lack of adequate relationships with teachers can affect their schooling and attainment. No wonder, black males often suffer disproportionately from poor achievement, high suspension, exclusions, and drop-out rates. Young people who struggle in school often lack the social and emotional skills (or “soft skills”) needed to succeed academically, deal with anger, make sound choices, and handle challenging situations constructively, ethically, and manage behaviors that prevent them from being suspended/excluded from school. It does not help that teachers who are often afraid of them, and do not know how to relate to them and lack emotional literacy (EL) themselves. Unfortunately, because of these challenges schools will often place black males in special education classes.

There is a cognitive/non-cognitive divide in education. Most of the school curriculum/pedagogy focus on cognitive aspects of education/learning (e.g., memory-based education) when compared to non-cognitive aspects of learning (social and emotional skills/learning). If our young people are to realize their full potential in our schools, it is crucial we begin educating the “whole child” and increase social and emotional provisions in our schools. It is the cognitive and non-cognitive aspects of learning combined that make young people successful. We need a new educational paradigm/mind shift. After all, educating the whole child makes good sense of course, all learning has an emotional base.

While there has been a proliferation of social and emotional learning programs in schools in recent years, social and emotional learning programs that focus on black males and cultural competence are limited. Therefore, we propose a new framework for social and emotional development/learning model for black males that focus on cultural competence. Our EL/cultural competence model is called teacher empathy, which focuses on relationship black males have with their teachers and therefore focuses on both the pupil/student EL and the teachers. The aim/goal of our model/curriculum is to: improve academic performance, motivate and help both black males and teachers, regulate and manage their behaviors more effectively, and reduce suspensions, exclusions, and drop-outs.

Describes Childreach – a US child‐focuses development organization which sponsors children and their families in developing countries – and a recent project in development education, “Buffalo banks and borewells: Childreach makes sense of development”, which involved creating and distributing educational newsletters on Third World and development issues. Lists the goals of the project and how they were addressed. Outlines what was gained from the exercise. Links this to the paradoxical situation in the USA whereby the public think money should go towards foreign aid but are reluctant to actually fork out any money themselves. Considers the role of trust and the concept of social capital, emphasizing that sponsors need to trust that their investment is making an important contribution to improving the life of the sponsored child and its family or community.

I. Introduction On January 1, 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), who has been described by Andrei Gromyko as a man who “has a nice smile, but he has iron teeth,” (Goldman, 1) gave an address to the people of the United States in which he informed them that the “Soviet people are dedicated to peace — that supreme value equal to the gift of life.” (Gorbachev, 1986(a),5). Gorbachev appealed to all that is good in the American people when he said:

Increasing digitization has transformed ways of work in modern age. Organizations are increasingly relying on global virtual teams (GVTs) as new forms of working. However, the challenges of configuration of GVTs have been reported to reduce the levels of employee engagement, especially so in multicultural GVTs. Extant research indicates cultural intelligence as one of the drivers of employee engagement in GVTs, though the nature of this relationship has remained unclear. As there is scarce literature on the nature of this relationship, the purpose of this paper is to examine the linkages between cultural intelligence and employee engagement and the authors explain the findings using the identity lens.

This study is an ethnographic inquiry to understand the nature of the relationship between cultural intelligence and employee engagement.

The results of the study indicate that the inclusionary pressures of non-work identities (national culture) are high in context of GVTs owing to their configuration. However, preferences (alignment or misalignment) of team members either initiate gain cycles or loss cycles, thus effecting the levels of employee engagement. Further, it was found that individual preferences may dynamically change from misalignment toward alignment with improved levels of cultural intelligence among team members of GVTs. The relationship between cultural intelligence and employee engagement has been found to be mediated by trust among team members in GVTs.

This is one of the first papers to understand the dynamics of this relationship in an organizational GVT context. The authors also propose a unique framework combining cultural intelligence, trust and employee engagement in the context of GVTs.