Dear friends of the Aga Khan Academies,

Happy New Year to you and your families from all of us at the Aga Khan Academies.

As we look toward 2018, I’m pleased to share with you some of the exciting developments that the Academies are anticipating for the coming year.

Across the Aga Khan Development Network, we will be continuing to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of His Highness the Aga Khan, marking 60 years of his enlightened leadership as the Imam of the Ismaili Muslims and founder of the AKDN. The Jubilee commemorations began on 11 July 2017 and will continue until July 2018. The Aga Khan Academies have been running two social media initiatives in honour of the Diamond Jubilee – Academies ‘Journeys’ and ‘60 Stories for 60 Years’ – and these will continue through this July. I hope you are enjoying them.

The Jubilee year marks a time of increasing expansion of the Aga Khan Academies. Construction of the full campus for our third Academy in Maputo, Mozambique has proceeded rapidly, and our students and staff are looking forward to the opening of the beautiful new school buildings that will house students from grades 3–7 in the very near future. The Academy in Maputo also expanded their curricular offering this academic year, having introduced the International Baccalaureate (IB) Middle Years Programme, which has been received very well by our students and teachers.
 
I’m also very pleased to share that our fourth Aga Khan Academy in Dhaka, Bangladesh will begin construction in 2018. The design for the forthcoming Academy won the award for best ‘Future Education’ project at the World Architecture Festival 2017. We’re looking forward to seeing the vision behind the award-winning design come to life, to provide talented students from Bangladesh and the region with a world-class education, regardless of their socioeconomic background.
 
In 2018 we will also be celebrating 15 years of the Aga Khan Academies network, with our first Academy in Mombasa, Kenya having opened in 2003. During the past 15 years, the Academies have pioneered innovative approaches in a multitude of areas, including the cross-curricular Aga Khan Strands, approaches to leadership development and service learning, campus design for a well-rounded education, talent identification, and developing local teachers into IB practitioners, amongst others. As our network grows, we are continuing to see the power of becoming a global, closely integrated and pluralistic learning community that allows sharing of ideas, expertise and thinking across varied contexts and cultures.
 
We greatly value your support for the Aga Khan Academies and our collective effort towards creating a better future through education.
 
Wishing you and your families the very best for 2018.
 
Warm regards,
 
Salim A.L. Bhatia
Director of Academies