Nurturing Learning Communities in a Time of Crisis

Dear Friends,

Thank you so much for choosing to support this project! We'd like to let you know how your funds are being used during this period.

Nurturing Learning Communities in a Time of Crisis is primarily intended to support the well-being and growth of promising young leaders from Asia who have completed our flagship program, the School of English for Engaged Social Service (SENS). Supporting well-being means responding to anything from serious medical needs to helping those facing natural catastrophes or enforced exile. Growth here primarily means maturing into compassionate and thoughtful leadership. We reason that all of us, not to mention young and budding leaders, need ongoing individual support and learning opportunities to be the best leaders we could be. So, much of our energies in using the resources for this project go to nurturing the ongoing learning of such young leaders.

At the moment the bulk of our funds are being used to support ALPS, or the Apprentice Leaders Program in Sustainability. Our interpretation of sustainability is broad. Abstractly, it includes environmental, social, and spiritual sustainability. More concretely it includes the sustainability of caring communities and genuine intimacy, keeping alive the possibility of living both thoughtfully and joyfully in precarious times, and taking beautiful and time-worn human practices and discoveries and helping them evolve gracefully and durably into the future.

In July of 2023 we invited 6 young graduates of the SENS program to join the new ALPS program. Their training was to consist of several stages:

1) Helping prepare for our new and ultimately very successful series of weekend workshops for Myanmar teachers living in exile in Mae Sot, Thailand. Key forms of work at this stage were a) drafting and distributing an appropriate application form in communication with Myanmar teachers we knew, b) assisting with the applicant interviews to choose the most promising candidates; and c) communicating schedules, workshop content, and next steps to selected candidates in both English and Burmese.

2) Acting as the work team for the two-weekend workshop format, including all aspects of transportation, set-up, room arrangements, communication with the teachers, making decisions about and helping with delivery of the lessons, and seeing to the process of evaluation.

3) Participating in 5 days of internal training between the two weekends. This included receiving opportunities to hear from and work with outstanding resource people in several areas, for example Philosophy with Children, conservation, UNESCO programs that support young leaders, and more. It also included doing readings together, practicing peer counseling, undertaking a contemplative walk into Mae Sot city, and helping prepare for the second weekend.

4) Participating in weekly Saturday morning classes online during which we discussed insightful readings on leadership and related issues.

5) Helping with the preparation of the SENS 2024 program, especially with interviews but also, for a few, essentially acting as assistant directors to myself, the SENS program director, in all major decisions of selection and financial support.

6) Becoming the work team to the extent possible for the entire SENS 2024 program. (We are in the midst of this process now, having completed 4 weeks out of the 12-week program.) Only one of the six ALPS participants has been able to commit to being with SENS 2024 for the entire 12 weeks. But nearly all will be able to spend some substantial periods with the program.

7) The final stage will be 2-3 days of evaluation of the entire first year of the ALPS program to see what we did well and what could be improved for the next round. We may carry out this evaluation in the town of Mae Sot, which would provide us the opportunity to end with a day-long follow-up workshop with the 18 Mae Sot teachers for whom we presented our earlier two-weekend workshop.

Your funds have been critical in allowing us to move forward with this bold program. It is bold because we are inviting young adults to participate at a high level of decision-making and involvement in the training of those who are essentially their peers. The donations you have provided enable us to provide a modest but fair and dignified compensation to the ALPS leaders who take leave from other work opportunities or delay studies in mainstream institutions so they can work with us. Many have deeply felt obligations to support their parents or family members, regardless of their own life choices. Your funds thus free them to continue their own growth and training by joining our program as part of the work team.

The results have been wonderful, in my view. I have been delighted to work with young graduates of our program, because they already understand to a great extent what we are aiming for. They are vividly aware of the many crises we face as human beings, and of the many ways these crises are refracted at local and regional levels. They are aware of the many ways we can nurture within ourselves the ability to provide genuine support to young people facing a difficult time in human history.

It has been delightful to work with a team that is full of energy, that is capable of being honest with me about difficulties, and with whom there is a great deal of margin for trying out new things, making mistakes, forgiving each other our faults, and then moving forward without regret. It has been delightful to have the trust of these young Asian leaders. It has been inspiring to see how well they communicate with their peers--the participants--sometimes in their own languages and sometimes in English. It has been gratifying to see the depth and the care with which they think about each other and about the participants, and to observe their keen interest in helping create a vibrant learning experience. For our whole purpose is to provide an experience of a caring learning community in which the welfare of each contributes to the strength and the well-being of all. As a learning community, we continue to find new ways to make the experience fresh, joyful, effective, and supportive of the participants' growth and independent thinking.

All of this requires much thinking not only about the group as a whole, but about each individual participant, about their strengths, challenges, triumphs, and newfound directions. It is this kind of thinking that I feel is most required of those of us who wish to encourage the natural leadership abilities of others. And it is in this area that I see most clearly the growth of our ALPS leaders. I have come to rely on them ever more for their insights and perspectives on the learning journey of their esteemed peers.

I continue to believe that nurturing leadership of this caliber is absolutely critical to the future of our planet and of our deeply interconnected societies.

Thank you so much for choosing to support this work!

With gratitude,

Theodore (Ted) Mayer

Links:

• Our Website

• SENS 2024 Brochure (PDF)