October 2023 - GTA-PeDAGoG - lists.ourproject.org

Two new articles on Radical Ecological Democracy
by Pallav Das 24 Oct '23

24 Oct '23

Friends, Two new articles have been published on the Radical Ecological Democracy website. In the first article, "Matupi athu Moyo wathu (Our bodies Our lives): Building feminist holistic health and direct democracy in Malawi", Salimah Valiani strings together grassroot voices highlighting the struggles and triumphs of women ushering in direct democracy in Malawi. https://radicalecologicaldemocracy.org/matupi-athu-moyo-wathu-our-bodies-ou… In the second article, regular contributor, Christine Dann, reviews the book, "Ecosophies of Freedom" by Milind Wani and Sucharita Dutta-Asane. https://radicalecologicaldemocracy.org/knowing-our-home-a-review-of-ecosoph… Please share the articles with your networks. The authors are copied on this mail in case you would like to contact them directly. Best, Pallav

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Invitation to Debate on AI
by Manish Jain 20 Oct '23

20 Oct '23

Dear friends-hope you are well. i invite you to consider hosting a local watch party on your campus for this event. it will be a good opportunity for students and faculty, particularly from the global south, to deepen their understanding and critiques of AI and techno-utopianism. love,manish Hi Manish, On the 7th of November, we are hosting The Future of AI event with Mustafa Suleyman. Mustafa is publishing a new book “The Coming Wave” and this is a book launch event. Mustafa co-founded DeepMind, one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence companies acquired by Google. After a decade at DeepMind and Google, where he was vice president of AI product management and AI policy, Mustafa co-founded Inflection AI. The event will be a dynamic online Q&A conversation about the book and the future of artificial intelligence. The aim is to enable change-makers and educators to comprehend the profound impacts of AI and help them formalize strategies to harness AI’s potential for driving social/environmental progress and mitigating its challenges. This is a great opportunity for members of the Ecoversities Alliance with physical locations to host a “watch-party” and join the online conversation. Everyone physically attending the event will be given a free copy of the book. What we need to know within the next week is: - Which organisations are interested in organising the event in person - How many people do they anticipate will attend the event and how many books do they want for the event? We need this information by next Sunday, 22 October. This is the form interested organisations need to fill out: https://share.hsforms.com/1SOqrgVMeQXeQKzyeZWXUjwc3hgc It includes information on book numbers + their address. - Organisations can use the attached invitation to promote the event. They can contact Kaajal for more information (kaajal(a)xinx.co) Feel free to let me know if you need more information. Thanks so much! Alenka, Complexity University

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Our Living Utopias course and Time bank
by Pallavi Varma- Patil 14 Oct '23

14 Oct '23

Dear PeDaGog members, Some of you might remember our webinar <https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/webinars:2022:learning:01> on Living Utopias hosted by Global Tapestry of Alternatives on 1st April 2022 in which both Sujit and I were reflecting on our hits and misses so far. At this meet , Dan, Melanie, Steven, Laura, Ashish and others were kind enough to share their thoughts and possible ways to make it more impactful. It was this that led to Melanie suggesting her experiential Time Bank pedagogy while Dan talked of his own initiative where discussions happen on the "kitchen tables and dining rooms of participants". Stevan and Laura were also so encouraging and validated our rationale of running such a course for communities. Over the last year Sujit took a version of this course to Indigenous communities in West Bengal villages through a community based organization while my intervention was to stop running it in a University space :) But last week, Sujit and I paired up for the 1st time after the COVID break and decided to offer the course to an urban English speaking audience in India outside of the University space through a non profit environmental organisation based in Bangalore called ATREE. We got a large pool of such diverse applicants (age wise: from a 14 year old to an eighty year old) and interest wise (from Phd students to post docs, health practitioners, univ faculty, experts on bamboo and waste, renewable energy engineers, school teachers, sustainable building architects, farmers, non profit leaders, Masters students, and women community leaders). And so finally the course ran for 25 such diverse participants from across India. It was very stimulating for both us instructors as well as the participants. They were engaged and motivated to design some action in their spheres of influence in a short turnaround time. And I remembered the encouraging words of the GTA group on that webinar day about getting such courses outside of University spaces to the community directly. I also want to share that I tried showing a glimpse of how Time banks run and put up a dummy sheet of offers and needs that Melanie had shared with me; thinking: this is just a glimpse..they may or may not get the whole idea as many of them are from different parts of India and how will they meet etc. BUT to our surprise, we found out that the Bangalore based participants ones are already making weekend plans to meet and and figure out ways to support each other! We are once again amazed at the power of this simple pedagogy! Am sharing a few pictures... Thanks for your time. Pallavi (and Sujit)

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Mutual Aid Software and Processes
by Berhan Taye 06 Oct '23

06 Oct '23

Hi all, I'm researching mutual aid, skillshare, mutual credit, or time banking software and processes. Do you or folk within your community use software or processes to manage these practices? Are you familiar with previous research that has mapped these initiatives? If so, I would be grateful for any links or references. In solidarity, Berhan -- Berhan Taye Sensemaking & Research | One Project <https://oneproject.org/>

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Travellers' University: A two-part Webinar series on the TU Journey and Alivelihoods
by mugdha trifaley 05 Oct '23

05 Oct '23

Hello, everyone! I'm Mugdha, a recent addition to the GTA's space, and I wanted to inform you about *an upcoming two-part Webinar series with Ashik Krishnan and the Travellers’ University, *on the *29th of September and 6th of October, at 1pm GMT. *Ashik is a part of the GTA's general assembly, and a part of Vikalp Sangam's Facilitation Team as well. Below is some information on the TU and the brief flow of the two webinars: The Travellers’ University is a unique initiative focussed on facilitating learning through travel-based experiential learning programmes, through multiple short and long-term explorations. In the former session of the two-part webinar series, we have 4 co-creators of TU introducing their work, along with sharing their own experiences that led them to thinking of alternatives to mainstream educational practices. They will also be talking about ‘Alivelihoods’, livelihoods of intentional living & lifelong learning for a sustainable, equitable & just world. In the latter session, we plan to host fellows from the ‘52 Parindey Fellowship’, TU’s 8-month long immersive program for exploring research interests through ‘Parindeys’ who are practising Alivelihoods: *“52 represents the number of weeks in a year, and Parindey translates to birds in English, which loosely captures the essence of mentors we intend to learn from.”* The webinars are between 45 minutes to an hour long each, and designed in such a way that they connect with each other, yet are able to be viewed separately. We hope that this will be suitable for participants who cannot attend both, but will be able to attend either session. *The GTA webpage's link is * *https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/webinars:2023:learning:travellers_university * <https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/webinars:2023:learning:travellers_…> *The link for registration is * *https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_VA-Kddb9SzOVWjDXQR26Kg#/registration* <https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_VA-Kddb9SzOVWjDXQR26Kg#/registr…> Links for further information on Travellers' University, the 52 Parindey Fellowship and Alivelihoods can be found below: https://www.travellersuniversity.org/52-parindey-fellowship https://www.alivelihood.org/ -- Hoping you have a wonderful week ahead of you, Thanks and regards, Mugdha Trifaley

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