Week 5! And the group returns to its regular format of Stratum Lounge & working on ESD.

The group discuss their expectations for the week ahead

An overview is shared, showing the plan for the upcoming week, and last week is revisited, with groups looking at elements learnt and competencies acquired. These included gaining a first look at systems thinking, using resilience to make it through a hard task and better team working skills.

The expectations for the week to come were to acquire a better understanding of didaction, clarity on the cultural project & an improved view on the leadership journey… hopefully these will all be met!

The first real task of the day was to come into country groups, and discuss the perspective of Sustainable Development from a more national/country specific perspective. These discussions were based around existing definitions, both from the participants themselves, and more historic definitions, such as Brundtland & the German Sustainability Council. The findings were then presented to the room.

South Africa present Sustainable initiatives from their home country

Again, after a break, the country groups reformed and this time looked at actions in their countries towards Education for sustainable development. For example, projects to combat poverty, nutrition deficits or equality. These were to be looked at critically – ‚Did they really change the rules of the game in their country?‘ ‚Was the work simply sustaining an unbalanced way of life?‘

• South Africa looked at programmes to get unemployed people back to work with work experience, a great initiative on the surface. However, they also highlighted the problems with too many benefits being claimed  e.g. by people already receiving money for disabilities, or people being drawn to the programme simply for the money and not for the work and experience.
• Germany talked about Food Banks, of great benefit to those who cannot afford food here, however it does not work towards moving people out of poverty

Tomorrow will continue this discussion, looking more carefully at Education in relation to Sustainable Development..