International Alliance for Invitational EducationAll about the Alliance
The International Alliance for Invitational Education is chartered by the State of North Carolina as a not-for-profit organization and designated by the IRS as a 501(3)(c) charitable organization. Members consist of an international network of professional helpers who seek to apply the concepts of Invitational Education to their personal and professional lives. A democratic society is ethically committed to seeing all people as able, valuable, and responsible, to valuing cooperation and collaboration, to viewing process as product in the making, and to developing untapped possibilities in all worthwhile areas of human endeavor.
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IAIE Mission Statement
A democratic society society is ethically committed to seeing all people as able, valuable, and responsible, to valuing cooperation and collaboration, to viewing process as product in the making, and to developing untapped possibilities in all worthwhile areas of human endeavor.
Because the International Alliance for Invitational Education is dedicated to democratic principles, its mission is to enhance life-long learning, promote positive change in organizations, cultivate the personal and professional growth and satisfaction of educators and allied professionals, and enrich the lives of human beings personally and professionally.
Invitational Education, a theory of practice, maintains that every person and everything in and around schools and other organizations adds to, or subtracts from, the process of being a beneficial presence in the lives of human beings. Ideally, the factors of people, places, policies, programs and processes, should be so intentionally inviting as to create a world in which each individual is cordially summoned to develop intellectually, socially, physically, psychologically, and spiritually.
How the Alliance began
On a summer afternoon in 1982 a group of 12 educators and related helping professionals from throughout the United States and Canada met on the campus of Lehigh University with Drs. Betty Siegel and William Purkey. Together, this group founded the Alliance for Invitational Education as a not-for-profit organization. From these fourteen charter members, the Alliance membership has grown to over six hundred professionals representing fifteen countries.
As we head into the wind and follow the stars to the new century, we can enter in our log, as did Christopher Columbus, "This day we sailed on."