Wednesday, October 15, 2014, 02:40 PM - Adult and Popular Education
With colleagues Catherine Irving and Joan Francuz, presented a paper at the Transformative Learning Conference at Columbia University in NY October 23-25. The paper describes our experience putting a face to face course in community-based microfinance that I taught for several years online.
Can online be transformative? Our experience is that it can be as powerful and altering as strong face to face education in the right conditions and we are only beginning to understand what that means. The key is leveraging what online learning can uniquely offer. We found three things unique to online:
- Participants are embedded in their work allowing for real-time experimentation in their field work and inquiries. Things are messy, complex, power-ridden in our work. We all need time and space to ask the right questions and experiment with peer supports and conceptual analysis.
- Space and time is expanded allowing for emergent issues to arise. We often don't know what we don't know. Online courses have the time to be more emergent- pulling in resources (human and conceptual) as they arise. In the mix of canned vs emergent content, there is much more potential here to be student-centred.
- Private space and deliberation are key. Literature and our experience has found that online provides opportunities to alter power and gender even personality dynamics. One participant in Egypt reported greater comfort in formulating her thoughts online than being drawn upon in a class. People can draft, revise, even return to earlier dialogues. Critical for those for whom english is not a first language. Or certain frameworks or approaches are new. Even introverts benefit. This collapses the power and space dynamics compared to a face to face environment considerably. The extended time and space allow individuals to take what is relevant to their own life and work- synthesize, integrate.
Wednesday, October 15, 2014, 02:33 PM - The Solidarity Economy & Microfinance
How do small producers and artisans get a leg up in a globalized world? Community organizing and support to local economies for a start combined with solid historical, market and contextual analysis. Taught the Livelihoods and Markets course with Yogesh Ghore at the Coady Institute the last couple of weeks. Such a treat. Yogesh is highly experienced and adaptive. Participants had rich experience to share from cooperative and federation organizing to pushing policy and legislation at national levels. Colleagues from Latin America, CUSO partners, most representing cooperatives and associations- a few government representatives- shared their work in such diverse areas as wild medicinal plants, wild almonds, honey, fruit/jam, cacao, coffee.
Great debates about the extent to which what we are doing is contributing to or building alternatives to the neo-liberal model. We work toward the bottom-up solutions where cooperatives can network and build their capacity to market their goods and do well, particularly in niche markets like fair trade and organic produce. But what of the producer cooperatives who choose to become distributors for large grocery chains. Tapping into a larger system allows smaller coops with capacity issues to focus on what they know-production. Is this an alternative economic model or more of the same? Does it depend whether it is wild medicinal plants or a commodity like coffee? These are the tensions and trade-offs. No easy answers.
Friday, October 10, 2014, 12:12 AM - Inspiring
The Cathedral in Mainz
arm in arm
we strolled the cloisters
emptying colour
built from
bird prayers and monks
walking face to face
knowing when to step forward
knowing when to step back
words fully attended
as rare and unlikely as
our symmetry
I can still hear your voice in the corridor
Gudenkenflugem
I can still hear your voice in the corridor
our symmetry
as rare and unlikely as
words fully attended
knowing when to step back
knowing when to step forward
walking face to face
monks and bird prayers
built from
emptying colour
we strolled the cloisters
arm in arm
For Karl Osner
We lost a great man this year. One of my most inspiring mentors was an unlikely one- an elderly German man, a bureaucrat formerly studied theology. We talked about art and faith, poverty and justice. We fought a lot too. He took me under his wing but, in spite of the decades between us and our experience, always as a peer. I learned how much you can learn from a colleague who is really a friend. How important it is for our work not to talk about work. What it really means to listen.
He took me to where he grew up in the Black Forest and areas nearby. We roamed museums and churches. I wrote this poem for him after a visit with him to the Cathedral of Mainz.
Karl founded an approach based on dialogue that brought countless policy makers from Germany and parts of Europe to live and speak with marginalized families. That some of these methods have been reduced to case studies or life stories missed what he intended which was dialogue without agenda. Reflection without a log frame. Who we are in all of this and what it means. SEWA, WIEGO, Mohammed Yunus and others have captured this spirit. We are blessed to have known him and been touched by his humanity. For more on his work and life see the link below.
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Tuesday, September 9, 2014, 12:48 AM - Outdoor adventure
Wednesday, August 13, 2014, 10:39 PM - Inspiring
200 miles of bike lanes and one with 40,000 bikers a day.
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