With their slogan “Creating a new generations of teachers”, Sampoerna School of Education (SSE) offers future teacher candidates unique opportunities to be qualified teacher with extended education, practical works and research.
One of the courses that run on this semester is Environmental Education. “It’s important to discuss environmental issue with students at SSE, because these students are soon to become educators,” said Mrs. Stien Matakupan, the lecture for Environmental Education course at SSE. In addition to nurture students to become environmental educators, this course aims to encourage students to be able to analyze the problems of the world from the point of economic, social and environmental as well as perform activities to address the current challenges on the earth.
Realizing this opportunity, she would like to bring the Earth Charter up as a topic on her public lecture session. To make this happened, she gave me the opportunity to organize and facilitate the Earth Charter Workshop for her students. Mrs. Matakupan is also part of Earth Charter Initiatives in Indonesia, she also had the honorable opprtunity to attend EC+10 event in India, November 2010.
The Earth Charter Workshop held on January 7, 2012 with more than 25 participants (include 2 participants from Teens Go Green). The workshop aimed to:
- Promote the Earth Charter so the students can understand about its vision and how Indonesia’s role in the Earth Charter history.
- Identify the relationship between green teacher project activities undertaken by the students based on vision of the Earth Charter.
- Promote about Earth Charter Initiatives in Indonesia and encourage them to take action inspired by the Earth Charter
The workshop was opened with the question, “what are the current challenges to life on earth?” Starting from pollution, waste, population growth, poverty, environmental degradation, climate change, until traffic jam problem in Jakarta. The discussion then moved into the different concept between conventional developmet and sustainable development. The Earth Charter was born to help promote the sustainable development. It’s needed ‘to promote the transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework’ as mentioned in mission of the Earth Charter Initiatives.
Having introduced to the four of main principles of The Earth Charter, participants then were grouped into 10 based on the Green Teacher Project team that formed prior to the workshop.
By the key question, “what are your activities/projects that reflect to each EC main principles?” participants were asked to discuss and write it down onto flipchart paper. Following the working group session, the open space session then provided participants with the opportunity to read others’ papers, ask questions, and comment.
Personally, I have been amazed by their activities either the existing projects or their projects plan. Some of their activities are Green Teacher Project, Coral Reef and Tree Planting, Recycling Project, Mangrove Project, Healthy Food Campaign, Anti-Styrofoam Campaign, until Reflection on Students Attitudes based on the Earth Charter values. Although they were confused at first, the session was going well as participants finally found the linkage among the Earth Charter principles.
The next topic was more about Earth Charter Youth Network and Earth Charter activities in Indonesia. I introduced Earth Charter Iniatives and there is a youth network that involves active young people from over 100 countries within this initiative, include Indonesia. Earth Charter activities in Indonesia mostly run by volunteers and Earth Charter Youth Group. The activity that happening now is Indonesia Rio+20 Global Youth Music Contest organized by young volunteers from all over the Indonesia.
Furthermore, I also brought up my own story and experience with the Earth Charter. It’s how and why I’m involved with the Earth Charter, how the Earth Charter inspires me, and how I initiated the first ECYG in Indonesia.
At the end, participants gave their testimony about their experience on this workshop and their hope about Earth Charter.
By the end of January, the participants will organize an exhibition to show off their projects.
TESTIMONIALS
Hopefully there will be more people aware and implement the principles of the Earth Charter.
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Earth Charter could be the basic reference if we’d like to apply the values in our life. SSE Green Teacher is a new organization, so the members haven’t got the experience yet in joining something like this. We hope that Earth Charter and SSE Green Teacher could have better cooperation. Thank you. 🙂
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Earth Charter could be the basic reference if we’d like to apply the values in our life. SSE Green Teacher is a new organization, so the members haven’t got the experience yet in joining something like this. We hope that Earth Charter and SSE Green Teacher could have better cooperation. Thank you. 🙂
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Inspirational. Cool. The Earth Charter principles can be a guideline in making an activity. Earth Charter is not only a document but guide to make people aware to the environment.
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Today was gone so fast because the activities are so much fun. The Earth Charter has raised my awareness to care about the mother earth. Many ideas came from the presentation to make the better world.
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Want to join Earth Charter activities.
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I hope that the activities/projects that I´m gonna do could help raising public awareness (especially students), so they would love the environment in accordance to the Earth Charter 🙂
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Honestly, I´m really excited to join with the community and be a part of the Earth Charter. Together we will be taking good care of the earth for our life. I and my community will be promoting the Earth Charter to the public and doing inspired activities. Hopefully we can keep these programs on going to be implemented. Together we can!
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My hope: (1) I will encourage my community to join the Earth Charter community (2) Inspiring more people by creating activities inspired by the Earth Charter principles (3) The activities that have been implemented by me with my friends in Jepara, can inspire many people.
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Hopefully the Earth Charter and Education activities would inspire more people to take action to save the environment.
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INCREDIBLE! Very inspiring! It´s much better to learn Earth Charter directly from the speaker. Actually, I am interested in Putri´s experiences on working with Earth Charter with many young fellows from all over the world. Hopefully in the future, environmental youth organizations will be growth and developed rapidly!
Inspirational. Cool. The Earth Charter principles can be a guideline in making an activity. Earth Charter is not only a document but guide to make people aware to the environment.
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Today was gone so fast because the activities are so much fun. The Earth Charter has raised my awareness to care about the mother earth. Many ideas came from the presentation to make the better world.
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Want to join Earth Charter activities.
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I hope that the activities/projects that I´m gonna do could help raising public awareness (especially students), so they would love the environment in accordance to the Earth Charter 🙂
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Honestly, I´m really excited to join with the community and be a part of the Earth Charter. Together we will be taking good care of the earth for our life. I and my community will be promoting the Earth Charter to the public and doing inspired activities. Hopefully we can keep these programs on going to be implemented. Together we can!
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My hope: (1) I will encourage my community to join the Earth Charter community (2) Inspiring more people by creating activities inspired by the Earth Charter principles (3) The activities that have been implemented by me with my friends in Jepara, can inspire many people.
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Hopefully the Earth Charter and Education activities would inspire more people to take action to save the environment.
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INCREDIBLE! Very inspiring! It´s much better to learn Earth Charter directly from the speaker. Actually, I am interested in Putri´s experiences on working with Earth Charter with many young fellows from all over the world. Hopefully in the future, environmental youth organizations will be growth and developed rapidly!
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I want to join the Earth Charter. I’m sure there will be more people inspired if we keep campaigning to save the environment, reduce pollution, and promote the Earth Charter consistently.
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Interesting. Inspiring. Fun. Meaningful. Hopefully the Earth Charter Youth will be improvedmore and more and succeed as well. Honestly, I was inspired to do many environmental activities with my friends and with Junior and High School students. I am also interested in being more committed to protecting the earth.
(Putri Ayusha)
Also posted in:
http://earthcharterblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/the-next-generation-of-teachers-start-to-use-the-earth-charter/#more-122