Global Services for Gifted and Talented Kids

Gifted and talented kids grow all over the globe. Women and men from France, Israel, Japan, and many other countries have made Nobel Prize winning contributions to the world; basketball stars from China and Africa have played in the NBA; South Korea, Cuba, and Ethiopia are just a very few of the countries that have brought home medals from the Summer and Winter Olympics.

     Based on a normal bell curve distribution, we know there are outlier gifted and talented boys and girls in every country in the world and in every socio-economic and disabled group within each country. Odense, Denmark, will host the 21st Biennial World Conference for Gifted and Talented Children from August 10 to 14, 2015. Details are available at worldgifted2015.com. Throughout the year The Global Center for Gifted and Talented Children (gcgtc.com) in Germany provides a full array of resources for parents, teachers, and young people. In honor of The International Day for Gifted Children, the Global Center is inviting gifted children to send it art, videos, poems, and blogs that can be posted at gcgtc.com.

     To help children succeed in school and in life (and, I might add, to help them contribute to the peace and progress of the world), the Global Center offers solution-oriented coaching, teacher training, consulting by Skype or phone, workshops, diagnostic testing, conferences, and lectures by staff members. A downloadable flyer is available online and additional information can be requested by sending an email to info@gcgtc.com or by filling out a contact form at the Center's website. Since the Global Center's website offers information in at least 85 languages, there is little or no excuse for failing to make use of information tailored to the needs of gifted kids.

     Online, the Center also recommends articles and informative blogs. Some of the blogs are written in Persian, Spanish, Dutch, and Norwegian, as well as English. I found Aimee Yermish's blog, written in English, to be extremely useful.

     In addition to resources provided by the Global Center, with the help of their teachers, gifted and talented students can go to ePals.com, to find projects that let them collaborate with students in Italy, Egypt, Sweden, Liberia, Malaysia, and other countries. Projects are grouped by age, up to 17 and older. If gifted kids are interested in robots, they can find young people with similar interests at the website, Wevolver.com. There is more information about projects involving robots at the earlier blog post, "Robots for Good."

     The mission of the Global Center for Gifted and Talented Children is one we all can aim to achieve: "We discover what a child is good at and then build on their own resources."