The Training

The Development Instructors Training Program

We all need it: A meaningful life

The Institute for International Cooperation and Development is an international learning community where holistic sustainable human developmentis realized.

The Universal is always the same the specifics are always different. - Robert Aitken

The IICD ethos:

Globally, everyone who is willing and able to contribute - independent of the "who, what, where, when, why and how" of birth or of any political, economical, social, technical, environmental and/or cultural barriers and boarders - has the right to be given equal opportunity to participate in and gain from the development process. It is upon this human first ethos that we design and shape a structure of mutual responsibility, respect, support and understanding that we can build our lives upon. Learning how to live and work - to recognize, to do, to be - in an environment of cross-cultural diversity; and budding in bloom as we evolve a more expansive and liberated world perspective, is the foundation of the 6 months training program.

Education is not filling the bucket but lighting a fire - William Butler Yeats

The Decider or Chooser of Roads

Analyse your current perspective of development. The appearance of the world today is that we live on a deliberated diet of fear and panic. Fear of living the emotional reality of being weak, dependent, vulnerable, "a loser", forces us to panic at the slightest hint of being deprived of something that changes our social-status. Is development really nothing more than a political-economic campaign to systematically force-feed the belief in the myth of scarcity in order to prop-up the illusion of social development?

Questions are the creative act of intelligence - Frank Kingdom

The IICD learning community:

It's as simple as your ABC's - Analyse your current perspective. Broaden your current perspective. Challenge the limits of your comfort zone. Develop your sense of self. Engage others in the development process.

The Nature of the Challengez:

Getting beneath the underlying assumption to find the grass root causes that block practical solutions that enable change is the nature of the challenge involved with Humanitarian Development (the ethical long-term and global development of human beings). It is paradoxical in its nature because, in a social-organizational context, we have learned to look for external "problems" to blame for our lack of strategic vision in internal human development. In consequence, "juggling" balls of ambiguity thrown in to detract attention away from the simplest questions being answered is one of many vital skills needed for anyone interested in working with development in its reality as a dynamic whole process of organic growth. This process starts with the self and works holistically outwards.

Picture this:

Imagine the solutions that you and a cross-social-cultural group of avid learners could come up with when working together and the difference you could make by taking positive action?

No passive bystanders.

Albeit with doing the daily practical stuff: cooking, washing dishes, cleaning the common areas, cutting the grass, repairing the buildings; or leading workshops, leading a problem solving discussion; or mobilizing people to take action in promoting a development goal, everyone is individually responsible and equally accountable to each other for directing the flow towards open learning. Accordingly, irrespective of whether our preferred learning style commences with active experience, reflective analysis, theoretical challenges, or pragmatic experimentation, we all need to continuously move through the cycle in order to learn new skills, knowledge and capabilities.

The least you need to know:

The days of sitting in isolated regimented uniformity, of negatively competing for our individual interests and needs to be met, of rote learning the minimum to pass an exam are gone. The exam is live and IICD is the learning ground. There is no onesize- fits-all national curriculum with a faculty of teachers going through the motions of reading someone else's theoretic supposition from a book. In fact, at IICD there are no teachers, only students.

Is not indeed every man a student, and do not all things exist for the student's behoot? - Emerson

Real-life:

Learning is lifelong; everyone has talents, skills, knowledge and experience. Those who posseses these attributes, take the lead by giving back what they have learned, to build the capacity of those who need to learn and those who need to learn take the lead in developing the capacity of the leaders previously gained skills and/or knowledge. In this way everyone is recognized as a leader in his or her own right and as a learner who leads. In parity, neither knowledge nor skills become redundant, as each person shares, stretches and expands the paradigms of each other's minds. If, however, within this limitless expanse of untapped human resource, there is some question that cannot be answered when asked, IICD has a library, unlimited Internet access, a diverse local community; NY, MA and VT; and - lest we forget - 300 hectares of nature surrounded by the Berkshire's to explore and gain inspiration from.

When we quit thinking primarily about our own self-preservation, and ourselves we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness. - Joseph Campbell

Dare to be the poet of your life song

In the highly competitive, over-crowded and self-serving world of our own creation, "assertiveness" has been promoted in a way that eludes byselling a false sense of security. If confidence is gained by believing we have to give or take something of personal value from another, the loss is ours alone. Being assertive, therefore, in a world dominated by causing us to react aggressively or passively to defend our self-esteem, is an art few manage to master.

You can't depend on your judgement when your imagination is out of focus. - Mark Twain

Life-Skills:

Mark Twain also advised us to "Learn to re-learn" and learning to re-learn those skills we live by so that we can re-align our self-esteem to think and act with confidence in different situations, is essential to the Development Instructor's work. Understanding how to critically identify and break the patterns that block fundamental change, find creative alternative's which enable development, how to manage self-change rather than being reactive to external pressure. These are just some of the life-skills that are crucial in our own rapidly changing world and in the world of those we will be working with in Africa. Having these life skills may be the factor which makes the significant difference in the direction the countries development takes.

The Bottom-Line

The path less chosen is by no means "easy". Sustaining the development of effective personal and inter-personal skills is the key to achieving everything at IICD, in Africa and in life. Although there is a clearly defined 6-month structure, the weekly structure at IICD is purposely designed to be loose enough for creative innovation, yet fixed enough for learning to occur. Within the structure there are frameworks that act as guides to map direction. Yet, like everything at IICD, they are not ordered by room service and served on a plate.

There is no single map that charts what course each person needs to take. Each person is the master who navigates the ocean of their learning. Development, albeit of the self, others, of an idea, a project or a country is hard WORK. Yes. W.O.R.K and those who are shy of starting the journey into self-exploration and discovery will not reach new horizons.

All labour that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence. - Martin Luther King. Jr

Expectations:

IICD has high expectations of each Development Instructor. The standard of excellence is no less than the DI "vets" club, ergo, those of us who have been where you are and are currently supporting the current DI's expect of ourselves. That each person continuously demonstrates the capability of living up to the challenge of being a positive role model who significantly influences the development process and that each person strives endlessly to meet, match and improve upon their current performance with the lifelong aim of achieving their full potential, what ever that potential may be. No problem!

Achievement requires self-discipline:

and those "assertive" lifeskills to purposefully utilize the time available to learn how to live and work: to recognize, to do, to be. By the nature of the environment, tolerances and intolerances are stretched and tested as the "normal" structure of our daily life is removed. Freedom from organized structure enables each person to organize him or herself, to find within him- or herself the level of motivation to independently think and act. The bonus is this is a learning community, where everyone is equally contributing their skills to achieving a goal far bigger than ourselves.

Past experience has demonstrated that age, experience and qualifications makes no difference; it's all about the attitude the individual has towards the work that needs to be done and the willingness, enthusiasm, commitment, stamina and confidence to do it. You are hereby cordially invited to try to prove us wrong!

Respect

"The IICD-DI veterans club"

DMM