UWC Short Course in Swaziland - Core Team members wanted. February 2010, 17th
Dear NC Contacts -
as you can see from the message below, we, currently a group of WK graduates, are planning to organise a UWC Short Course in Swaziland. For this exciting endeavor, we are looking for some people who want to get involved with the core team, to turn this idea into reality with us, thereby spreading the amazing Short Course movement further.
Please forward this message to anyone who might be interested in this - the more diverse the team will be, the more exciting both the process and the results.
Thank you -
Lukas
"Lukas Wallrich [UWC Deutschland]" <lukas.wallrich@uwc.de>
Sent by: lukas.wallrich@gmail.com
PS: If you have any questions, ideas or contacts that might be of use to us, please email me,
or write to our general email: swazi.sc@gmail.com
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Lukas Wallrich <
lukas.wallrich@gmail.com>Date: 16 February 2010 22:44
Subject: UWC Short Course in Swaziland - Get involved!
To:
United-World-Colleges@yahoogroups.com
Hello everyone!
If you don’t have any plans for the winter of 2011-2012 yet hold off making any until you have read this! We, Anski, Lukas and Sandhya, three former students of Waterford Kamhlaba United World College in Swaziland are trying to organize a two-week-long UWC short course. The theme would be development, the location Swaziland and the time most likely late December 2011 until mid-January 2012.
For those of you who have never heard of either United World Colleges or UWC short courses, I am going to give a brief introduction to both. United World Colleges is an alliance of 13 different international schools around the world whose mission it is to make "education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future." Students are selected in their home countries and sent to one of the schools to complete a two-year program called the international baccalaureate. If you would like any further information on UWCs here is a link:
http://www.uwc.org/who_we_are/default.aspx.Starting in 1987 the United World College movement has developed a wonderful method to enable other young people but those selected for the two-year sojourn at one of the colleges to benefit from the UWC experience: UWC short courses. These short courses are 2-3 week workshops dedicated to issues such as intercultural integration, conflict management, promotion of peace and are supposed to encourage participants "to take a global view on the important issues of our times"(UWC short course website). Only last summer, in august 2009, a short course entitled "Shaping Society" was held in Germany. If I managed to stir your interest, check out the following website:
http://www.uwc-shortcourse.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=54&Itemid=54. Two of us were closely involved with that.Now that you have an idea of UWC short-courses you are hopefully excited to participate in the one we are planning in Swaziland! As already mentioned above the theme of the short course would be development an area that can be looked from many different angles. Here are simply some of the possible discussion topics we have come up with so far:
development of education - for example, why general primary education
economic development
social development
culture and development
indigenous knowledge
intellectual property- benefit sharing
ethics of development
global governance (World Bank, IMF and others)
NGOs and civil society - who speaks for whom?
local solutions - solar, biogas, alternative energies
Thus far all we have is a rough concept of what we want to talk about, a time and place, some rather vague ideas of what needs to be done in order to make this short course happen and the number of participants which would probably range from 40 to 50. Most of them would be from the surrounding African countries but there would also be some from other continents. You see there still is a lot to be done and for hat we need your help.
What we are looking for rights now are three members to be in the core team with us. The core team will be the group of people that will continuously work on the short-course over the course of the next 2 years. I know this seems like a really long time but for funding purposes we have to start as early as possible. In addition starting this early will save us the extreme stress that usually accompanies undertakings such as this one. Each core team member will be responsible for one of the following six work areas:
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Role |
Description |
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|
Controlling |
Ensures adherence to milestones, responsible for internal communication. |
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|
Finances |
Responsible for financial planning, fundraising and accounting. Prob needs to set up funding team. |
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|
Participants |
Responsible for recruitment and selection of participants, contact with national cttes, support with travel arrangements, information & advice before, workshop choices if appropriate. |
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|
Program |
Responsible for the planning of the program - both for the development of the modules and the development of the schedule. |
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|
Publicity andOutreach |
Responsible for publicity for the short course, the webpage, media contacts, but prob. also for the recruitment of local, non-financial partners and for outreach into the local communities. |
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|
Logistics |
Responsible for the contact with the venue, catering, on-site transport, materials etc. If possible, a person with in-depth knowledge of Swaziland. |
I would like to mention at this point that you don’t need to fear, that since we came up with the idea for this short course we will in any way claim a certain position. We can’t do this alone and you guys get the first pick when it comes to areas of involvement.
So, if you are interested to work with us, and we really hope that you are
J!!!! fill out a short online application under https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dFBhNjI5UTdJbzkxQUItV3ZwZTN0Y0E6MA by the end of February. We will go over each application very carefully and let you know our decision by mid-March. Once we have the core team we will set up a schedule and figure out how we can best work together as we will most likely all be in different corners of this beautiful planetJYou are also more than welcome to turn to us with any questions that arise during the application process. Just shoot an e-mail with your question to
swazi.sc@gmail.comHopefully we succeeded in inciting your enthusiasm. We really look forward to your applications and to working very closely with some of you in the future. This could be an incredible experience, a project which not only the participants but all of us would benefit form greatly and we are all to keen to embark on this journey with you!!!
All the best to you!!!
Anski, Lukas and Sandhya
--
"Until the lion writes his own story, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter." African Proverb