By Theodore (Ted) Mayer | Designer and Director
Dear Kind Supporters and Donors,
This project, "Nurturing Learning Communities in a Time of Crisis," is focused on growing a support team that can carry on the work of the School of English for Engaged Social Service (SENS) into the distant future. This emerging support team is part of a higher-level training program we refer to as ALPS, the Apprentice Leaders Program in Sustainability. The participants are lovely young adults who are taking on higher responsibility with every passing month. It is a delight to work with them.
We want to thank you first for having already supported this work of cultivating young leaders, and for considering offering further support in the future. We feel that cultivating leaders of integrity within communities of mutual care and shared learning is one of the most powerful things we can do right now. For we face civilizational threats from state-sponsored violence, climate change, and biodiversity loss, to mention only some aspects of the current crisis.
The difficulty is that for many of us these catastrophic processes remain distant, or abstract. Yet their consequences will affect us all in ever more concrete ways in the coming months and years. Our response in this project is to foster the formation of small groups of people who make the decision to support each other in meaningful ways, and to help bring about profound and enjoyable learning experiences for their peers. It's about self-awareness but also social and ecological awareness that is made vivid through each meeting. Their peers then are more likely to carry this process on. We thank you for being a part of this work through your financial contributions, and for the highly individualized training and engagement your donations make possible.
We would like you to know that July 10th is a GlobalGiving Bonus Day, with very generous matching funds for any donation over $100. Please consider a donation (of any amount) on that date. For greatest chances of receiving matching funds, please donate as soon as possible after 9:00 am Eastern Daylight Time (US) on the 10th of July.
We would like to share the following updates on our program:
1. We ran our SENS 2024 program from January to April for the first time this year without an Assistant Director. Instead, the ALPS team played the role of joint Assistant Director, with the help of experienced English teacher (and lawyer) Kerry Raleigh. They helped in assessing our progress, determining our next steps, handling individual difficulties, choosing appropriate teaching approaches, and supporting my leadership as director.
2. Two of our ALPS members, Au (nickname) and Soe San (nickname), took on major tutoring responsibilities during the SENS 2024 program. Following the program, they spontaneously chose to continue offering tutoring to their tutoring groups (and others), and are still doing so. This provides ongoing support not only in English but in creating a meaningful community for our students far beyond the three-month program.
3. Our ALPS team spent 10 days in the border town of Mae Sot at the end of April and early May. Together we offered a full-day follow-up workshop to Myanmar teachers we had invited to our two-weekend workshop last year. We then spent several days evaluating the SENS and ALPS program and making plans for the future. Finally, we participated in two days of field study along with an international cohort of professors and activists brought together by Civic Engagement 4.0, a project under the Office of International Affairs and Global Network of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. One of the photos we have shared here shows us visiting with a staff member of the charitable organization, Help Without Frontiers, which provides educational and other kinds of assistance to Myanmar people in Mae Sot. We visited with four or five such organizations while in Mae Sot, and joined in reflection sessions on how we could best provide additional support to the large number of forcibly displaced Myanmar citizens who have been seeking refuge in Mae Sot.
4. In early May we also invited two new people to join the ALPS team. They are Trang (nickname) from Vietnam and Paung (nickname) from Myanmar. Like all members of ALPS, they are alumni of SENS, and are thus especially knowledgeable and supportive as they assist us to carry on our program in different venues and circumstances. Their next big task will be to help us provide our second year of programming for Myanmar teachers living in exile in Mae Sot, Thailand, in August of 2024. They will be learning by doing this work, along with the senior members of ALPS. We have shared a photo here of a women's panel on International Women's Day, and these two new members of ALPS are the two women on the right side of the photo.
5. Mi Bu (nickname), one of the senior members of ALPS, was one of only 112 out of more than 2,000 applicants from Myanmar to be offered a scholarship to study at the master's level by a well-known scholarship program. She hopes to apply the scholarship to complete an MA in Human Rights at a US university. We are proud of her accomplishment, and will keep you updated.
6. Au (nickname), one of the senior members of ALPS, will become my Assistant Director next year for SENS 2025, and is already and effectively taking on more responsibility, as well as honing his English and teaching skills. We have shared a photo of him here tutoring several members of his tutoring group.
Thank you for reading this report. Thank you for your companionship in this work. And thank you again for your support!
We would be glad if you could share this report and/or talk about our work with your friends and family.
With profound gratitude,
Ted Mayer
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