i have been planning some work on education for sustainable development for older children and community groups to play with together - there is some really good material out there that is produced by aid agencies, so it has been fun crawling and trawling for stuff - thought it might be useful to record the main sites i used, just in case some of you are launching summer term community projects where you are working with the global citizenship theme - worth looking at are :

cafod - for primary schools

global gang - for children - Christian aid

learn for educators - Christian aid

oxfam education

cool planet (for children and educators) - oxfam

save the children

actionaid

food and agriculture organisation excellent manual for planning a community garden

tearfund youth

worldaware

if anyone is starting a community garden or outdoor education project, i have found grounds for learning, learning through landscapes and the eden project to be very friendly and helpful for ongoing advice - hope you have fun with this stuff !

first gathering

a friend on the scottish network has called a first gathering of local church reps to discuss 'youth outreach' in her neighbourhood - she asked for some suggestions so i gave her mine, which for any first gathering are :

1) work hard on the venue and the welcome in terms of comfort and hospitality (good food/drink, comfy seats and a not too overbearing greeting are essential given that people make their minds up about something in the first four minutes) - make it NICE for people - give them a treat - spoil them a bit - they are not used to it in Christian circles so plan to communicate some of the outrageous generosity of God through the physical set up and environment

2) plan to be relentlessly inclusive - make room for the small voice, the less confident, the bizarre, the impractical, the different, the outraged, the entrenched and the depressed view in equal measure - you will get them all, but sometimes people just need a chance to say where they are at and let you know who they are before they are ready to listen and to collaborate with others - let them dump their big issues and know that they have been recorded, noticed and accepted as important - don't be tempted to try to deal with these issues there and then, but be prepared to show how the issues will form an agenda for action in the future

3) find fun things to do together - have a basic outline for gathering people's thoughts and questions and for collecting evidence of what the issues are locally - it is nice for people to feel that they are coming to something that has been thought about in terms of how the forum is structured - if you can find fun and active ways to do this all the better - make participation a requirement through using post-it notes, mindmaps, pictures/posters, speakeasy, my top ten etc etc - make sure people have an opportunity to contribute in the way that's best for them

4) show them something that will inspire them towards a new horizon - a video clip, someone's story, a really practical example of sustainable outreach in action - raise their sights - give them something that stirs them and heightens their expectations or helps them to look at their situation with fresh eyes - keep it short and snappy - give them a BIG powerful shot of creativity and excitement that will lift their aspirations and galvanise their sense of what they are capable of and of what is possible

5) celebrate what you have achieved right there and then - find a creative way to be proud of any consensus - make sure you focus on that before people go home

6) don't leave before you have a firm plan for the next gathering - people will not want this to be a one off and you can't answer all the questions in one go - make arrangements for collecting people's details and email them all the notes and thoughts as soon as you can - be in contact with each person at least 3 times between the first and the next gathering, even if it is only to say hi, thanks for coming, any more ideas ? etc

7) hold it all very lightly - lead gracefully and pursue peace in every interaction - whatever your thoughts and feelings this first meeting is not about what you want to see happen, so give way to their need to influence the agenda without letting one person dominate or hijack the proceedings - be open, cheerful and accepting of each person's contribution - don't allow yourself to dwell on your impressions of how things went - be determined to encourage others and think well of EVERYTHING that took place

8) trust, in our heavenly Father, who knows what His children need even before they ask it.............and who is able to do more than we can possibly think or imagine

that was my eightpennyworth - am interested to know what others would add to or take away from this list and why - leave a comment and let me know eh?

the circus is in town

cirque du soleil are in town with their new show delirium - sadly i am still in bed, so a trip out will not be possible BUT to keep me amused, my lovely girl AMY, who is very artsy and excitable, made me watch Diqui James' FUERZABRUTA on video in my bed - their show from the edinburgh festival last year called euphoric really is mind blowing - a truly sensual, spectacular treat of theatricality and imagination - made me all excited !! - have to lie down some more now as i am supposed to rest - but they are worth checking out if you want something that will make you feel truly euphoric !

backyard brunch is back

backyard brunch is back for the summer season - quite a crowd at the gathering, but several absent for very good reasons (mr porter in ireland, one family on holiday, one in singapore and a poorly one just had a wisdom tooth out) - we all chose a horse for the grand national this afternoon (winner gets a big bar of chocolate), shared a wooden box full of old fashioned sweeties (remember black jacks and hubba bubba ?) planted sunflower seeds for our growing challenge and of course fenceball is back as competitively as ever !! - going to be a good summer, except that we are losing two families who are moving very soon which is sad - great excuse for two leaving parties though !

how i see things

am confined to bed again with a bad heart - very frustrating - all my plans for today (an end of term party, which was a 'spring visit to paris' with a class of P7 children, breakfast at a cafe, a virtual cruise down the seine, buying fruit at a street market, having a riverbank artist sketch your portrait, dressing up as a famous french person, building a paper monument - all really good fun stuff !!) have not materialised, so i am finding it difficult - but the view of the hills near my home is lovely from where i am lying, so guess i just need to change how i see things and enjoy the opportunity to rest up at home and appreciate the view - sometimes that's all we can do.......eh?

connecting

jim was reminding me yesterday of a book that really influenced me in my teaching and learning - parker j palmer is one of my mentors and the kind of educator that i aspire to be - to know as we are known is a 'thin' book, for educators who are in that uncomfortable, 'thin' place where they are wrestling to bring some congruency to who they really are as people and how they really teach - i find that it is very easy within a fomal education system to feel out of alignment with who i really am - sometimes that sense of dissonance makes for more creativity, but mostly i find that feeling of loss of integrity disempowering - anyway, parker's book is all about recapturing 'hidden wholeness' and the recovery of community in education - he calls that dissonance 'the pain of disconnection' and describes education as a process where authentic spirituality is nourished through the creation of spaces in which obedience to truth is practiced : we become reconnected through the process of living as a community of truth - that is really hard to do in schools right now - there is no time to connect with children and the school improvement agenda ensures we have no option but to comply with directives that for the most part seem to run counter to any attempt we might make at 'wholeness' - however, this book has always inspired me to keep on trying for those things, so i think it is definitely worth a read for those of you that face the same struggles - (thanks jim for teaching me how to embed a link - you are a mighty fine educator !!)

directions

i am delighted to learn that today is a day of new directions for the church of england - a new law enabling a bishop's mission order to be issued, regarding the formation and recognition of new forms of church that ordinarily wouldn't fit within the traditional parish structure, has been adopted - combined with the new ordination category of 'pioneer minister', i find that an enormously exciting direction for the anglican church to be going - for those of us that have been ministering on the frontiers for a while, this presents a wonderful opportunity to redefine what connection to 'big church' means - it doesn't mean we have to conform to that, especially if we are worried about how much that will cost us in terms of losing our identity on the growing edges - but it is quite comforting to have that possibility presented as an option - for those that have struggled within the constraints of the traditional parish system, it must be very exciting to have this new direction opened up as a legitimate course of travel