Train Leaders in Asia for Peace and Sustainability

Dear Friends of the SENS Program,

This Quarterly Report covers the period from October 15^th, 2019 to January 15^th, 2020. During that time we engaged in a range of activities, from preparing our 5^th annual SENS course to actually beginning the course in January. We are very pleased to report that with your generous gifts to our program through GlobalGiving, combined with assistance from others, we were able to fund 14 individuals from across Asia to join the SENS 2020 course. What did this require?

I. Selection Interviews

We are engaged in a process of cultivating leadership among young Asians so they are better equipped to help create harmonious local communities and to work to mitigate the effects of the global crises of inequality and climate breakdown. With this broad vision in mind, we think of them as world leaders. Indeed, with awareness of the real local and planetary issues, and a commitment to solve them, they may be leaders in a more genuine sense than many famous politicians.

To make the SENS course effective, we need to choose participants who are likely to carry on what they learn with us. They need to be open-minded, able to listen, and committed to working for the wider good (not only their own career or family). For this reason we take our selection procedure very seriously. We begin with student applications, then follow up when appropriate with a personal interview. That interview is carried out by the Director, Ted, and by the Assistant Director, Melissa. [Melissa is an experienced university lecturer in the areas of writing, rhetoric, literature, and the use of language to undo and respond creatively to oppression.] 

Through interviews over many months, including during this period, we identified roughly 18-20 students who would be excellent candidates to study in SENS. In fact, interest in the SENS program has been growing, and we were forced to turn away a number of highly qualified students, with a sincere invitation for them to apply to SENS 2021.

The 14 students we were able to fund come from the following countries: India, China, Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, and Myanmar. This group includes students as well as young adults who work full-time. Nearly all of them are involved as volunteers or full-time workers who respond to the social issues that face their home countries and communities.

II. Biennial Conference or Our Sponsoring Network – the International Network of Engaged Buddhists (INEB)

In late October more than 200 individuals from around the world participated in INEB’s biennial conference that took place this year at the Deer Park Institute in Bir, India. This conference is important because it is a place for face-to-face meetings between individuals who are committed to understanding the contemporary world, and the place of spiritual or personal inquiry and social transformation in our time.

It is also the occasion for leadership meetings. In the conference and the leadership meetings, we have the chance to share what we are doing in the SENS program, to invite students and tutors, and to reaffirm the important place of SENS in the transformative programs of the INEB Institute for Transformative Learning.

Such connections have played an important role in allowing us to design and implement SENS programs in other countries around the Asian and ASEAN region.

III. Making it Possible for Students to Come

During the time that we are selecting students and also after completing this process, we become fully engaged in making it possible for those students to actually attend the course. Naturally this involves fundraising, but also working through the legalities of getting passports and visas.

1. Fundraising

We are delighted that with the help of the GlobalGiving platform as well as generous institutional and individual donors, we could support 14 students to attend our SENS 2020 program. We are deeply grateful for the ease of donation that GlobalGiving makes possible, which includes providing the documentation necessary for donors to receive tax deductions for their donations through GlobalGiving.

At the same time that we have increased confidence from the generous donations we’ve received, we see that we could do much more. If we had sufficient funds, we could easily have accepted four more students to attend. For this reason we will reinvigorate our efforts on the GlobalGiving platform, and think creatively about how we can make all of our fundraising more effective.

2. Documentation & Visas

Here we simply want to say that quite a number of our students come from marginalized communities who are sometimes seen in their home countries as second-class citizens. This means that many of our students need our advice and support to either obtain passports or to obtain the necessary visas to attend the SENS program. Our Logistics Coordinator Topsi Rongrongmuang is the one who expertly guides students from very different national backgrounds (and legal frameworks) to obtain the documentation necessary to bring the students.

IV. Opening Ceremony

Our Opening Ceremony took place on January 12^th, 2020. The ceremony is a chance to bring together friends, supporters, and SENS alumni in the central Thai region to welcome new students and to offer an auspicious beginning to our three-month experience together. We are grateful to Dr. Pichai for offering opening remarks, and to Phra Maha Napan, a monk from the well-known Wat Saket and a graduate of SENS 2019, for attending and offering humorous and light-hearted encouragement to the SENS 2020 cohort. The students in the 2020 cohort also have the chance to speak publicly for the first time, saying who they are, where they come from, and what they hope to gain from the program.

V. Beginning the Program

The first days of our SENS program are designed to demonstrate to students that learning a language works well if it is done in a relaxed, enjoyable, and respectful environment. We demonstrate this by jumping immediately into activities that are accessible and fun for the students, and that help them to see quick improvement in their English skills. We also help the students remember their profound intelligence, and the value of the experiences they have accumulated over many years in their own local contexts. Even a highly educated resident of New York or Boston would be incapable of understanding the details of the local contexts that students have come to see and understand over many years. We assist the students in recognizing that their ability to communicate in English also allows them to share the wisdom and insights that they have acquired in their home communities. Furthermore, it allows them to share how difficulties manifest in those home communities, and to observe linkages with the stories of students from other parts of the world. This process in turn constitutes the very first steps in the formation of a worldwide network of young adults working to address and resolve common human problems, and to realize a kind of leadership and community that is based in compassion, nonviolence, and mutual understanding.

On behalf of the INEB Institute Work Team, I sincerely thank you for your continued support of the INEB Institute and its SENS 2020 Program. We are truly grateful to you all that your support is making it possible for us to run such an amazing SENS 2020 program.

With Metta, 

Ted Mayer

Academic Director

The INEB Institute

Links:

• SENS 2020 Program on INEB Institute Website
• INEB Institute Facebook Page

To Our Generous Donors, Supporters, and Followers,

The following is an update prepared for you on recent developments in the School of English for Engaged Social service (SENS) and related projects.

This report covers the period from early May to late August 2019.

Introduction

The SENS program has proven itself to be a reliable vehicle for transformative learning. We have seen each cohort of students leave with newfound self-confidence, the ability to listen more deeply, a greater understanding of the social and ecological crises we face, and a determination to plan a life that will both realize personal dreams and respond to the challenges of our time.

The purpose of this report is to keep you apprised of developments in this program. Our activities in the period covered by this third quarterly report fall into four main categories:

1)   Preparations for SENS 2020

2)   Raising visibility and appreciation for the work of the SENS program

3)   Supporting SENS alumni

4)   Expanding the work of SENS into new areas

We provide details on these activities below.

1 – Preparations for SENS 2020

Director Ted traveled to his family’s home in the U.S. during May and the early part of June. On each trip to the U.S., Ted purchases literature and materials to be given to students during the course, as well as new books and materials to enrich the INEB Institute and SENS library. Such materials are of course important as they expand on the kinds of reading material that students can make use of at their leisure in the comfortable library at our Wongsanit Ashram campus during the three-month course.

In preparation for each year’s SENS course, we need to update the Student Application Form and create a new brochure. We completed these activities during this period thanks primarily to the work of Topsi, our Logistics Coordinator, but also with the help of many others, including a graphic designer and a very flexible and accommodating printing house.

Of great importance during this period is building the work team, which includes finding a suitable Assistant Director and building a strong team of tutors. We are pleased to announce that we have hired a new Assistant Director for 2020, Melissa. Melissa is a citizen of the U.S. and a resident of Phuket, Thailand. She has an MA in Rhetoric and Composition, and a passion for language, writing, and cultivating analytical and critical thinking skills on behalf of peace and social justice. Inspired by transformational educator Paulo Freire, she has extensive experience in, and explored the boundaries of, teaching composition in a variety of venues. Among the courses she taught in the Northwest of the U.S. are: “Analytical Writing: War and Peace,” and “Research Writing: The Path to Genocide.” She received the “Inspirational Teacher of the Year Award” in 2011 from the University of Washington (CSE). We welcome Melissa to the work team. Her energetic approach to work has already given us confidence that she will contribute to making the SENS project sustainable in the medium- to long-term.

2 – Raising Visibility and Appreciation for the Work of the SENS Program

We know that the more people are aware of the quality of the work we do in SENS, and of our commitment to our students, the more we will attract students of high caliber from an even broader range of countries. Likewise, our visibility will tend to encourage support of many kinds, including financial support that can be used to offer scholarships to students with few resources. One way to heighten this visibility is to share the results of what is in fact a form of ongoing pedagogical research. This research asks how we can combine the teaching of English, leadership, and critical thinking skills in such a way that students’ self-concept, joy in learning, and capacities for transformative work in the world are truly strengthened by the course.

To this end, Director Ted has given much of his time to various writing projects. The first is a book chapter entitled, “In These Troubled Times, Could Every Classroom Become a Site of Transformation? The Story of the SENS Program,” to be published in a volume of papers on innovative civic engagement and transformative learning programs in Asia, edited by Dr. Mochamad Indrawan, a research scientist at the Research Center for Climate Change of the University of Indonesia. One SENS alumnus, Sabin, and one tutor, Mahesh, also wrote short essays on their experiences in SENS for this volume, which is expected to be published in early 2020. Ted is also developing a paper for publication that he presented at the International Symposium on Religious Life (ISRL) in Yogyakarta in the fall of 2018. Entitled “Grounds for Appreciation: Building Interfaith Solidarity by Engaging in Shared Projects and Facing Common Challenges,” the paper describes the interfaith work of the SENS program and is expected to be published early next year by Analisa, the journal of the Indonesian Ministry of Religious Affairs.

Ted also participated in the organizing of a conference on civic engagement and transformative learning that took place in Solo, Indonesia in late August of this year. He represented the INEB Institute at a conference that brought together academics and activists from around Southeast Asia and beyond, large numbers of young adults from Indonesia, and the mayors of a number of Indonesian cities (and one from southern Thailand), who are actively working for sustainability and for participatory governance in their cities. The conference was entitled: Civic Engagement 4.0 – The Solo Forum. It was co-organized by Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok), the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS, Yogyakarta), and Kota Kita (A City for All, based in Solo), an NGO working for citizen participation in the design and development of cities. 

3 – Supporting SENS Alumni

One of the long-term aims of the SENS program is to create a community of alumni who continue to grow beyond the three-month program and who constitute a mutually supportive community. Towards this aim, we are always on the lookout for scholarships, internships, and innovative university programs that our alumni may want to apply for.

We mentioned above that two of our alumni were able to engage in a writing project for publication. This is one kind of support we have been able to provide. A second form of support is when we are able to invite our alumni to conferences and workshops where they can carry on their learning and collaboration. This was the case with the Civic Engagement 4.0 program in Solo, Indonesia. Keen to create an interactive conference to the extent possible, the organizers of the conference planned for a full afternoon of workshops. They also generously provided funds to bring assistants who could offer support to the leaders of the workshops. Two of our alumni, Dewi of Indonesia and Khudoh of Myanmar, were supported to attend the conference and to assist Ted in presenting a workshop entitled, “Listening Partnerships: Living Fully and Leading with Integrity in a Time of Crisis.” We continue to look for ways that we can support our alumni. The Civic Engagement conference was one very positive example of what we can do with the help of like-minded partners.

Following this conference, Ted gave a presentation entitled “How to Assess and Respond to Contemporary Global (and Local) Crises,” at the kind invitation of Yayah Khisbiyah, Director of the Centre for the Study of Culture and Social Change of the Muhammadiyah University of Surakarta. At this event, Dewi shared her experiences of SENS 2019, speaking to the 30 or so students and professors in Bahasa, Indonesia; in doing so, she greatly contributed to the warmth of the reception given to the talk. We are very grateful to Yayah and her team for their invitation and support. 

4 – Expanding the Work of SENS into New Areas

A final area that we have been working on in the past few months is expanding the offerings of SENS. The annual SENS course that takes place in Thailand from January to April every year is intended for Intermediate to Advanced learners of English. We have long wanted to experiment with offering a SENS course for Beginners, and in August we had the chance to plan for such a course with various partners of INEB in Myanmar. There was great interest from four organizations, and plans were completed in August to offer a four-week course in Yangon with the first three weeks in an “Office Format,” which would require students to study from 8:00-12:00 every weekday and continue with their office work in the afternoon. The fourth and final week would be in “Retreat Format,” meaning students would be able to dedicate  themselves fully for that week to the course content focused on English and leadership.

Please stay tuned for our next report, due by the end of the year, for further developments in the SENS program.

Thank you very much for reading, and for your ongoing support.

Warm regards,

Ted Mayer, Director of the SENS Program

Links:

• INEB Institute SENS 2020 Website
• The INEB Institute's Facebook Page
• School of English for Engaged Social Service 2020 Brochure