When I was eleven…
May 23, 2016Why is your CISV story so important?
June 3, 20162016 is CISV’s year for Sustainable Development. Throughout the year, we will bring you ideas, discussion pieces, materials and resources to help you to explore, educate on, and take action toward Sustainable Development in your Chapter or Programme. If you’re interested in contributing, contact the team. To see all Sustainable Development posts, click here.
A Training session to introduce the Peace Education content area 2016: Sustainable Development
Summary of the session
The first part of the session establishes that all of us have heard the phrase Sustainable Development and it identifies the most knowledgeable people in the room who are then recruited as facilitators for the second part. The second part is work in small groups and explores some key aspects of sustainable development. The third part links sustainable development to CISV’s mission and what each of us does in CISV.
Duration: Approx. 45 minutes; the session can be extended to 90 minutes, if the facilitator has the knowledge and the group has access to additional material to discuss Sustainable Development issues in more detail.
Materials needed: Print out a number of copies of Appendix 1; the number of copies should be roughly ¼ of the expected number of people in the group.
Preparation needed: The facilitator should familiarise themselves with the teams and resources available on CISV’s Sustainable Development 2016 web pages beforehand so they can advertise them effectively and so they can help to explain Sustainable Development, as needed.
Goal: All participants know that Sustainable Development is the 2016 peace education content area, and they are willing and able to make use of the related resources.
Indicators:
- Participants understand the concept of the yearly CISV peace education content area (K)
- Participants understand how Education for Sustainable Development contributes to CISV peace education (K)
- Participants are able to access the available resources for the 2016 CISV content area (S)
- Participants are willing to incorporate Education for Sustainable Development into the activities they undertake as part of their volunteering in CISV (A)
Session plan
- Do: Let’s find out how confident we, the people in the room, are about Sustainable Development (5 minutes)
Ask the below sequence of questions and instruct participants to stand up if their answer to the question is “yes”. If the answer is “no”, they will sit down. The purpose of this activity is to demonstrate that we all (probably) have heard the term Sustainable Development; most of us know something about it, but few of us will consider ourselves experts in this area. After each question, comment on what is happening: E.g. “look we all know the term!”; “oh, we are getting fewer people now”; “now this is a quite small group that is left”
Questions:
a) Have you ever heard the phrase “sustainable development” before this session?
b) Have you learned about “sustainable development” in CISV, school, and university, as part of your job?
c) Have you taught or educated others on sustainable development?
d) Are you prepared to help me lead the rest of this session by facilitating some small group work?
e) Ask the people who are still standing after the previous question to come forward and introduce them to the group.
Give each of them the Small Group Worksheet and ask them to work through the questions in it with their groups over the following 15 minutes. Split the whole group into a number of small groups, depending on how many facilitators have come forward.
- Reflect: So what does Sustainable Development really mean? (15 minutes)
Small groups, guided by their facilitators, go through the questions in the Small Group Worksheet (see Appendix 1) and answer as many of them as they feel makes sense.
Note: The questions are formulated so that it is impossible to answer them all in the given time in any meaningful way.
- Apply: Sustainable Development as a part of CISV peace education (20 minutes)
Ask the small group facilitators to come forward again. Depending on the room set up, you can organise this part like you are interviewing an expert panel, or like a TV show.
Questions to your experts include:
- How many of the questions did you manage to answer with your group?
- What was easy, and what was more difficult?
Introduce the term Education for Sustainable Development: Sustainable Development is a very complex idea, which is evolving all the time, so we all need to learn and keep learning about it. Raise question six and ask the facilitators to explain: How does Sustainable Development fit into CISV peace education?
If the facilitators answer the question well, that’s perfect and your job will be just to show the dedicated Sustainable Development 2016 web pages (access directly from www.cisv.org; look for the banner at the bottom of the page) and explain that this is where a team of CISVers will present relevant materials throughout the year: Go use it in whatever you do in CISV! There will be materials and inspiration to use in trainings, programmes, in JB and other chapter activities.
Rupert Friederichsen
on behalf of the Sustainable Development Team
The Sustainable Development Team includes members of CISV’s Educational Programmes Committee, Kompaz Project, International Junior Branch Team, Communications Team, and the International Office. Our team coordinator is Madeleine Le Bourdon. Feel free to contact us.
Photo Credit: Mariana Espinosa – Junior Branch CISV Chile
