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)
