Development Education Activities - other organisations

The Sr Louis Fund

• The Sr Louis India Fund promotes Community Development in Yercaud, India. It also provides funding for students in the region to undertake third level education courses. View a recent feature of Sister Louis Keane - the founder of the Sr Louis India Fund.

Conferences, Seminars AND TRAINING

Previous Conferences

’Campus Engage’
Date: June 4th - 5th 2009
Venue: The Conference Centre in Croke Park Stadium Dublin
Campus Engage, the network for the promotion of civic engagement activities in Irish higher education, held its inaugural international conference entitled Higher Education and Civic Engagement Partnerships: Create, Challenge, Change. The conference brought together higher education academics and administrators, people involved in community organisations and students, from Ireland and beyond. It provided participants with an opportunity to discuss the potential for change through service learning / community-based learning, research, civic education and volunteering.

  Building and Promoting Excellence in Practice ’
2 ^nd International Nursing and Midwifery Conference .
Date:   April 6 ^th - 7 ^th  2009.
Venue: School of Nursing & Midwifery, National University of Ireland Galway.
Please go to http://www.nursingmidwifery.ie/ 

’Embracing Diversity’ A feminist peace building seminar
Date: Wednesday, 11 February 2009
Time: 10.30am to 3.30pm
Venue: The Main Hall, the Guildhall, Derry
Keynote speakers:  Bernadette McAliskey, political activist and author, publications include ’On the Irish Freedom Struggle’, ’The Irish Fight for Socialism’ and ’ The Price of my Soul’
Myrtle Hill , senior lecturer in women’s and gender studies at Queen’s University, and author of ’Women in Ireland: A Century of Change’ and ’Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster Society 1740 to 1890’
The keynote speeches were followed by a panel of women speakers from diverse backgrounds including the LGBT, Traveller and Multi-cultural communities, who discussed their experiences of women’s human rights; women’s activism; women working across divides; women’s contribution to public life; gender equality; dealing with differences and what feminism means to individual women today.  For information about future seminars and the summer school in 2010 go to Hannashousenwci.ie or call +353 1 8786400. 

’ Learning in, with and from the community’: Community Knowledge Initiative 3rd Annual Therapy Student Service Learning Conference
Date: Tuesday, April 7th 9.15 am—5.00 pm
Venue: NUIG Áras Moyola
Join the staff and students from the Occupational Therapy and Speech and Language Therapy Departments in celebrating student – Community collaboration. For further information please view NUIG CKI. 

Globalising Higher Education: Universities, International Development and Social Justice.
Date: 22-24 ^th April 2009
Venue: UNESCO Centre, School of Education, University of Ulster, Coleraine
Call for New Generation’ Research Student Panels: deadline January 31st 2009
l.blackwoodulster.ac.uk

Women, Peace and Conflict
In November 2008 DERN Research Associate and several network members attended the conference “Women, Peace and Conflict” hosted by the Irish Joint Consortium on Gender Based Violence. The conference was attended by international and Irish women’s rights activists, representatives from Irish government agencies, and from the UN and Irish and international civil society organisations. Mary Robinson who is special advisor to the Consortium addressed the conference and noted that that the voice of women was critical in peace negotiations.  “ Where women are excluded or are absent from the table, the agreed solutions often fail to recognise the impact of violence on women and children,” she said.  “ If women were given more opportunities to engage in conflict prevention and peace negotiations, it is likely that solutions would be more holistic and effective”.  The aim of the conference was to learn from the experiences of women in conflict and peace building; and from other countries implementing UNSCR 1325 and to promote Ireland to take a leading role in promotion and implementation of UNSCR 1325.  The conference was an important mechanism to raise public awareness and understanding in Ireland of women’s experiences in conflict and their right to a role in peace-building. View the Consortium's latest report 'Stepping up Ireland's Response to Women, Peace and Security: United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325'and the full Report on the Women, Peace and Conflict Conference. For more information about the Consortium please go to http://www.gbv.ie/ or contact infogbv.ie

Human Rights in the 21st Century
Marking the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Royal Irish Academy held a conference entitled ’Human Rights in the 21st Century’ in October 2008 which was attended by DERN Coordinator/Research Associate Clionadh O’ Keeffe. Speakers who included Mr Eamonn MacAodha, CEO Irish Human Rights Commission, Professor Michael O’ Flaherty, School of Law, University of Nottingham, Professor Atrracta Ingram, School of Politics and International Relations UCD and Professor Caroline Fennell, Dean of the Faculty of Law, UCC, debated the significance of the UDHR for Ireland and some future perspectives on what needs to change in order to realise these rights. Professor Michael O’ Flaherty argued that it is timely to reflect on what the adoption of a rights based approach to governance might mean in practice and how it could make a difference in Ireland.  Tracing some of Ireland’s achievements in following the human rights signposts O’ Flaherty also called attention to some of Ireland’s downsides such as institutional racism, and the State’s continued treatment of marginalised groups such as Travellers, the persistence of child poverty, gender discrimination and xenophobia and how the single most important institutional initiative for human rights protection - the Human Rights Commission – instead of receiving the additional resources it so badly needs is actually under threat. Faced by such problems O’ Flaherty asks how could a state that is committed to the goals of the Universal Declaration have gone astray?  View Professor Michael O’ Flaherty’s presentation. An audiovisual presentation entitled ’Human Rights and the next US Administration’ made by key note speaker Harold Kohn, Dean of Law at Yale is available on http://asx.heanet.ie/ria/KohLecture.asx. 

Global Health Challenges - Environment, Hunger and Diseases of Poverty: A Human Rights Issue - Conference
In November 2008 DERN Project Leader Dr. Diarmuid O’ Donovan and DERN Coordinator/Research Associate Clionadh O’ Keeffe participated in the biennial conference of the  Irish Forum for Global Health and Research. Hosted by the Centre for Sustainable Livelihoods at the University College Cork the conference contributed to the robust discussions on Global Health Challenges - improvement in the health of individuals and populations globally by creating networks that will promote research and education and advocate for investment in global health. View write up of the Conference discussions.

“ The Role of Civil Society and Academia in Promoting a more active Citizenship in Central America in Response to the Challenges of Globalization” 
November 7th-8th, 2008: Organized by the Centre for International Studies and Irish Aid, Dr. Felipe Revollo, DERN - postdoctoral researcher, attended together with other 50 scholars from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Ireland this international seminar. During his participation in a series of academic panels and discussions, Dr Revollo referred to the contributions of third level institutions in promoting citizenship education and democratic practices in current times of global transformation. In his presentation “The Historical Evolution of Development Education and the Study of the Interdependencies in the Promotion of Active Citizenship at Third Level in Central America” Dr Revollo illustrated his analysis of the purpose of education in modern society as a way of equipping people to work within the global economy or way of providing knowledge, skills and values needed to understand and interpret the changing world, so that people can be more active and engaged citizens.

Rethinking Education, In Light of Climate Change
Organised by the Cultivate Centre, DERN member Sarah O’Malley attended the conference last November 2008. The conference focused mainly on education and training needs to support the reduction of carbon emissions. It also brought together key actors to share ideas and approaches towards education for sustainable development (ESD) including Professor Peader Kirby, University of Limerick, Margaret Kelly, Department of Education, Elaine Nevin, ECO-UNESCO, Paul Gogarty, TD and Nancy Serrano, Regional Centre of Education for Sustainable Development. View Sarah O' Malley's report on the day.

Centre for Global Education
The 3rd Annual Development Education Conference: Re-imagining Development Education, took place on Wed 9th April 2008.  The conference was organised by the  Centre for Global Education .  View a report on the day's proceedings .

Reclaiming Power - People's Resistance to the WTO, World Bank and IMF
This Conference was held in Dublin on the 13th Oct 2007. View Sarah Clancy's report on the day.

Voices of Popular Power in Argentina
This was a seminar organised by the Global Centre for Education in Belfast. The aim of the seminar was to enable Development Education practitioners to become more aware of the new movements for social change that have emerged in Latin America generally and Argentina specifically - over the last decade. View the Seminar Report .

Galway One World, Spunout.ie and Media Forum organised the Media Moves Conference
DERN members Sarah Clancy and Tanya O Sullivan attended the event June 8th 2007. View Sarah's  feedback   and Tanya's feedback on the day.

Cultivate Centre - Seminar on Education for Sustainable Development
Seminar Schedule
DERN members: Dr Henrike Rau, Liz McCarthy, Joanne Coffey and Pierre-Olivier Latrémouille attended the Cultivate Centre Seminar on Education for Sustainable Development on the 19th April 2007. The following is a summary of their thoughts on the day: 
The ESD workshop organised by the Cultivate Centre for Sustainable Living and Learning as part of their Convergence Week 2007 proved very useful and informative and brought together a range of interested individuals and representative from diverse governmental and non-governmental stakeholder groups. The question-focused, interactive format of the workshop allowed for in-depth discussion with members of different stakeholder groups (e.g. Irish Aid, DoEHLG, DoEdu, Eco-Unesco, Cultivate Centre, teachers, community activists etc.) and offered opportunities to exchange ideas on barriers to ESD and potential solutions.

The speakers provided a broad overview of how ESD has been implemented in Ireland over the past ten years.

• Roland Tormey and Andy Griggs explained how ESD has been implemented through educational institutions in both Ireland and Northern Ireland, particularly through the association with the Ubuntu Network.
• Elaine Nevin spoke on the involvement of the UN in development education in general, and more particularly how the UNESCO organisation dovetails with existing projects across the country. 
• Margaret Kelly and Aidan Clifford updated those who attended on how education on sustainable development is streamlined in the national curriculum.  The audience was given a comprehensive understanding of the curriculum in the presentations, however it was apparent that the issue of development is often sidelined by being included in the non-examinable elements of the course, and thus it is not fully respected as a subject matter of sufficient importance.
  Later members of the audience noted this point, to which Margaret Kelly responded the SD is indeed included in mainstream subjects such as Geography and Physics, Home Economics, Business etc.  It is clear that the issue of SD in the curriculum is yet to be fully solved.
• Tara Shine explained how Irish Aid is involved extensively in implementing the ESD guidelines in Ireland.  It was clear from her presentation that Irish Aid are very enthusiastic about the need to put in place the principles outlined in the ESD document.  She also made documents available to those interested, giving more information on Irish Aid and its involvement in third level education in Ireland.
• Michael McKenna explained how the government has attempted to include SD education in its work.  It was apparent that the other organisations represented at the seminar are, however, doing much more work to achieve this.
• Davie Phillips summarised the information provided, and gave some information on the work that Cultivate does.  Of particular interest to Pierre, Jo and myself was the Powerdown course that Cultivate has devised. 
  
  We felt that overall Cultivate is an excellent organisation that provides a wealth of information, and indeed contacts, that is necessary in implementing ESD (and much else besides) in the future. The World Café  was very interesting and enjoyable.  Each person at the event took away something different from the chance to interact with the many and varied people there.

Training Courses

• ’Options and Issues in global Development’: a one day workshop for those interested in volunteering overseas in a developing country.
  Date: January 31 ^st 2009 10am – 4.30pm
  Venue: Galway One World Centre, Bridge Mills, Galway
  Cost: Comhlamh or GOWC €25. Non members €40. Students and unwaged €20
  Booking: Contact Kate in Comhlamh on 086 2265802 or katecomhlamh.org
  For further details: http://www.galwayowc.org/; http://www.comhlamh.org/; http://www.volunteeringoptions.org/

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