Groups of educators from Islamic boarding schools in Indonesia will be visiting Honolulu schools Monday and Tuesday as part of an East-West Center program designed to foster mutual understanding between the United States and Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority nation in the world.

In addition to the O'ahu school visits, the educators have just spent two weeks visiting schools in states across the U.S.

The Partnership for Schools Leading Change program has brought 45 educators from 31 private Islamic boarding schools, called pesantren, in various regions of Indonesia to visit schools in diverse communities around the U.S. The participants, a number of them Muslim clerics, gathered first in Indonesia for orientation meetings, then spent a week attending a "best practices" workshop at the East-West Center's Honolulu campus before departing for the U.S. schools.

Goals of the program include