SiebenLinden EDE 201.. - Gaia Education

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SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON PARTICIPATORY PEDAGOGY, INTEGRAL DESIGN AND CONCRETE FOLLOW-UP PROJECTS Like every year, many of our participants are experienced trainers and facilitators themselves – and come with the aim of starting up EDEs in their home countries. This year, we made the ‘Training of Trainers’- aspect, which is a part of every EDE, more explicit. Our focus on participatory pedagogy has always been strong, but was vastly intensified. An introduction to both Permaculture Design and Dragon Dreaming (a holistic participatory method for the realisation of outrageously successful projects through dreaming, planning, doing and celebrating) is included in this EDE and highly appreciated by participants. Including these helped for a process of creating follow-on projects to emerge from the group. This year, we included more sessions on the actual creation of project designs, business plans and concrete funding applications towards the end of the course. FACILITATION TEAM Martin Stengel Robin Alfred Kosha Joubert Paulo Mellet Christian Felber Beate Walfsdorff Silke Hagmaier Eva Stützel Jane Rasbash Kosha Joubert served as main focaliser of this course. Martin Stengel and Robin Alfred both collaborated in the overall facilitation of the course. Other trainers included: Chistian Felber (economist, teaching at university in Vienna and author of several books on a new economy of solidarity), Paulo Mellet (Permaculture teacher and connecting link to LUSH), Silke Hagmaier (Horse whisperer), Beate Walfsdorff (Permaculture Trainer and EDE-alumni), Jane Rasbash (Board-member of Gaia Education) and Eva Stützel (Project Coordination 7Linden). The community of 7Linden welcomed the participants from all over the world with open arms and played their role in creating a supportive learning environment and sharing experiences. The presentations of participants were essential: the richness of wisdom and experience they shared were central to the aims and effects of this course! FINANCES AND BUDGET The registration of the 7Linden EDE Course as an official course with the European agency for lifelong learning continues to be extremely helpful. This provided funding for 9 participants. Now, after 3 years of preparation, we had support and funding for the non- EU participants, too. We were invited to put in funding applications to the climate funds of German embassies worldwide and took great care in selecting participants carefully through our GEN-networks. In the end, so many individual embassies were interested in funding participants from their countries, that the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin found it more efficient to arrange one central funding proposal to go through them.
Representatives of the Foreign Ministry met with participants, both in Sieben Linden and Berlin, and have expressed their dedication to funding next years course as well. The relationships built to the German embassies are now leading to further funding applications in specific countries (for example for the Thai and Bangladesh EDEs). Also, we received funding and support from the Heidehof Stiftung, a German foundation focussing on education for sustainability and are hoping to deepen our collaboration with them especially to the benefit of projects in Africa. COURSE EVALUATION BY PARTICIPANTS We used the online evaluation form provided by Gaia Education and received positive and encouraging feedback from participants. The results can be seen at: http://bit.ly/7L_EDE_survey (PDF Download) WHAT WENT WELL: - Official recognition of and support for our work - Building of a close-knit community in a very diverse, international group - Integrating more explicit participatory pedagogy - Training of Trainers - The ecovillage setting of 7Linden: organic local food; connection to broader community; living examples - Faculty – teamwork - Connecting this EDE-project strongly to GEN- projects - multiple synergies - Concrete writing of project designs, business plans, project proposals - Inspiration and follow-on projects - Broadband internet connection at last! WHAT COULD HAVE GONE BETTER: - Having an assistant present for the whole course who can also help with reports, etc. after the course - Martin Stengel was ill during the first week, while Robin Alfred’s father had just passed away and Robin needed some time to process – holding a group this size without an expansive facilitation team for the first week was a stretch - Keeping an open slot of time after the course for recuperation and swift finishing off of reports
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SiebenLinden EDE 201.. - Gaia Education

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