Concept Paper and Schedule

 

“School for Ecumenical Leadership Formation 2001”

 

1.    Background:

 

  For a long time, The SCMs and church youth have contributed to ecumenical movement through producing future leaders. Nowadays, this tradition has been very weak due to several reasons. However, we recognize that without producing young leaderships the whole ecumenical movements would have a serious problem in the near future.  One of the reasons is that ecumenical student and youth organizations were unable to provide proper venues for young people to train and improve themselves as qualified ecumenical leaders.  The previous leadership programs have been so partial in terms of agendas that they could not nurture young leaders with comprehensive understanding on the crucial ecumenical agendas.

 

  This program is joint project with the Christian Conference of Asia(CCA) Youth desk inviting  40 youth and student leaders from the SCM and the CCA.  This program hopes to encourage, develop, support and strengthen systematic and purposeful leadership development for the local, national and regional ecumenical movement.   In order to achieve these goals, there should be more attention on planning of modules and transmitting the skills and experiences by running modules that are relevant to our context and network.  Therefore, there will be a process of leading to the setting of modules, drawing resources from partners, and also, a conducive mechanism to network with local endeavors.  Also the duration of this training program at the regional level is much more extended than the previous practices.  This comes from evaluation that the previous programs could not provide comprehensive and deeper understanding on the ecumenical agendas mainly because of time limitation.  We estimate that at least 35-40 days, if not enough, will be the minimum to achieve the goals of the leadership courses.   

 

 

2.   Objectives:

 

  Generally, this training  program seeks to enable participants to:

 

§ Sharpen their awareness and analysis of Asian society and challenge to the churches through sharing of experiences, exposure, studies and reflections.

 

§ Study the biblical-theological perspectives on ecumenism and on issues and ideologies related to Asia and global society.

 

§ Trace the history of ecumenical movement in the national, Asian and global levels, identifying convergence, challenges and possibilities.

 

§ Search alternative approach to communicate and advocate ecumenical witness among students and youth in the concrete life of the peoples.

 

§ Strengthen each other in their ecumenical journey and aspiration.

 

 

3.      Project Description

 

Preparatory Stage:

The selection process of the participants shall follow a set of criteria formulated by the WSCF-AP Regional Office and CCA-Youth Desk respectively.  Each identified country shall have an equal number of participants.  The participants should be aged between 23-29, as this course is targeting at the second-line to first line student and youth leaders.  And there should be certain gender balance and sub-regional balance. Once the participants are identified and invited, the WSCF-AP and CCA will require them to immediately undergo initial research and studies on various subjects that will be dealt in the SELF.    They shall then prepare a formal presentation paper on  certain issues.  Technical preparations for the training shall also be done with Thailand SCM and NCC during this stage.

 

Training Stage:

The 35 days’ training course will have the following components: worship and bible study;  inputs and discussion;  presentations and sharing; exposure and integration;   action planning and evaluation;  Please find more information on this period through the appendix.

 

Follow-up Stage:  

During this stage, the WSCF and CCA will encourage the participants to share what they learned from the SELF on the local level.   They can .organize a seminar or workshop in campus or their movements.  It will be the crucial part of follow-up works to implement what they learned in the SELF into actual programs of their organizations.   The WSCF and CCA will try their best to train them as future ecumenical leaders in a close relationship with local SCM and NCC.    

 

 

4.   Project Management

 

  The entire project will be under the auspices of the WSCF-AP Regional office and CCA–Youth Desk.  The Regional Secretary of the WSCF-AP and CCA-Youth Secretary, as the chief executive officers, will be primarily in charge of the project.  The WSCF-AP Women Coordinator will assist in implementing and facilitating the actual training course. Together, they will be responsible for the necessary arrangements for materials, resource speakers/facilitators, and contacts for the exposure program.  A team of the WSCF-AP Regional Secretary, the Women Coordinator, the CCA-Youth Secretary and some SCM and NCC members of Thailand will be formed to facilitate the whole training course.

 

 

5.      Evaluation 

  A brief assessment of the program’s actual implementation will be done on the last day of the program. The impact of the program on the national level will be monitored by the WSCF-AP Regional office and CCA-Youth Desk in the ensuing year after the training course.

Particularly from the WSCF-AP side, standard training type-evaluation will be administered 10 months after the workshop by the WSCF-AP Standing Committee.  The evaluation will be done with the following guidelines:

 

1)      The level of understanding of the SELF participants about the subjects and issues during the course. 

 

2)      The follow up works by the SELF participants in the national movements, which will includes the level of sharing with members and implementation into actual programs

 

3)      The level of ecumenical cooperation of participants with different student/youth ecumenical organizations.

 

 

6.       Time Table

 

January - February           Formulation of Selection Criteria

                                         Participant Selection, Invitation, Finalization  of the venue

                                         Invitation for resource speakers/facilitators

 

March – June                   Participants' initial  research and studies       

                                         Exposure arrangements, preparation for training materials

 

July 15 – August 19        Actual Training course and Evaluation

 

August -                           Implementation of Action Plan,  Evaluation by Committee

                                         Monitoring of follow-up works                                         

 

 

7.  An outline of the training module

 

Module 1: Orientation

Aims: To be able to introduce participants themselves and have a sense of being part of the group. Understanding the background and the organizers and to start building community.

§         Introduction of participants

§         Introduction of WSCF-AP and CCA

§         Community Building

 

Module 2: Defining our times

Aims: To have more critical understanding about the reality of Asian plurality and the dynamic and complexity of such context. 

§         Understanding host country and Exposure

§         Personal history as Social history

§         Analysis of socio-political and economic setting of Asia

Module 3: Reading the signs of the times

Aims: This is an intensive study module to clarify current theological positions dealing with the context of Asia. The participants will have acquired a strong theoretical as well as theological base. It also aims to challenge participants to doing theology in context.

§         Politics, Ecology, Human rights, Feminism, Inter-faith dialogue and actions  

§         Globalization and economic justice

 

Module 4: The ecumenical movement

Aims: To understand and challenge the prevalent practices and ideology in the ecumenical movement in Asia and worldwide as well. Participants are also expected to be aware of the different trends of movement in Asia

§         An overview of ecumenical movement: past and present

§         Problematizing the understanding and perspectives of ecumenical movement

§         Understanding and commenting on new social movements, the trend of civil

movements and spiritual movements

 

Module 5: Communicating the ecumenical vision to the youth

Aims: To set guiding principles for promoting ecumenical vision to the students and youth and experiment the different forms of building and strengthening this communication in order to “act locally”.

§         Learning to express and communicate ecumenism by curriculum writing, liturgy, symbols, arts and images

 

Module 6: Reflexive Learning

Aims: To wrap up this extended training program by reflections on what the participants have learned and to suggest ways to moving forward in challenging the ecumenical movement, be it local, regional and global.

§         Articles writing on certain issues, topics or possible actions and work plans