[PeDAGoG] Our Living Utopias course and Time bank

[Pallavi Varma- Patil]

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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