Hmmm…
(it would be nice to be able to see the post I am responding too while typing, is this a generally percieved problem?)
Some things a little out there Nadia, but in general you got it. The sum of funding generated in full was closer to 50,000 euro, we generated 12,000 locally and this was topped up by the OCounty Enterprise board.
By aligned I mean lined up, just meaning that the guy had agreed to build the resource and I sent out mails to each cafe round the country. I got very little feedback from them.
Our connection to Foroige is through another project, one the police run to engage young offenders, they do this through Foroige, who claim to be a national youth organization and yet respond to our efforts to do meaningful work in the ways outlined above. The position is clear.
I don’t want specific help from the edgeryder community on the project in Birr, this makes no sense to me, I never help because I am asked to, I help because I can, perhaps I’m wrong to give others the same credit. I work like an ant, if I have useful info or can do something immediately to help the group I do it. If it is not possible for whatever reason, I stop trying to force it. Right now, this is not possible, I will not force it, but if it becomes possible, I’ll be ready. If collaboration makes this possible then let’s do it, I have the cultural and artistic and multi media connections to make something like this possible on a wide scale…with the right approach of course, the rest is about forming a constellation of the willing with access or connection to schools…we all went to them, therefore we all have them, the younger we are the fresher the connection. If the schools are willing to form partnerships, and the relative external body of learner communities are in place, then this is the basis for a grant/fund application to the EUropen Commission. If we are being asked to present at events such as cited in the header of this thread, then there is a weight to any such application proven by the need expressed in this (old) PDF on the macro scale, and the instance I have cited on the micro scale. In this case…
What can be useful is the general structure, if you are to propose immediately applicable program’s that will have the greatest effect then space and time are neccesary. Following the logic of scales it’s clear that if we are to both full the gap, and follow Machiavelli’s sound advice (of not changing the existing structure) then summer holidays and the use of school buildings is the directly applicable response. It is doable now without changing what exists already.
Then on dealing with the problem of goal based learning in outmoded one way stagnant educational environments I assert that we can introduce self selected education in these spaces utilising the community’s own populations along with tech enabled learning resources and by engaging certain technical and cultural networks. Again this would require knowing what is available locally in terms of knowledge skills and abilities aswell as linking these to national networks of practitioners in various fields and involves a step beyond the SCIM concept to a more personally mapplicable resource.
So…is there a next step? I’m pretty clear on that not being my decision to make.
im not.