#14 Life-long learning

Learning requires hard work.

In the last 10 months, I’ve been through some intense learning experiences that I would like to structure here in this edition as an opportunity to share about them and also to reflect on what I have learned through them.

At the end of this newsletter, I will attach a list of learning & development opportunities which you may benefit from (or you can share with other people who might). I believe all these opportunities share the same worldview: “from ego to eco”.

Mastering Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability

I cannot stress enough how much MSLS is a truly transformative experience. Living in a small town in the south of Sweden, learning in a closed setting with an international group of people coming from all corners of the world – has been challenging and enriching. Most days I was faced with the not-so-pretty reality of our world – pollution, biodiversity loss, degradation of our environment, social inequality. ?Besides bumping our heads together as a group of around 30 individuals we became a community – with its strengths and weaknesses. What attracted me the most to this programme was the knowledge about sustainable development but also the personal development (leadership aspect). We have had a subject that went on for 10 months that inquired about our personal development. The most important thing I got out of this subject was the value of having a personal practice. As everything around us changes every day either way – having a routine brought me enormous benefits in mental and physical health. Lastly, the word ‘community’ still echoes in my head from what I witnessed just before leaving Karlskrona – it was the 20th anniversary of the programme which reunited people from 20 generations of sustainability practitioners and change makers. What a sight!

There were tears, there was laughter, there was a lot of love (including a great number of little children that joined the wider MSLS family) and there was hope. Hope that if we work together we can imagine a different world and steer towards it.

P.S: In 10 days we are organising an event for Bulgarian speakers that are interested in joining the programme and in 1 month we will organise an English-speaking one!?

Training for Trainers for Youth in the Council of Europe

Who would have thought that inside the walls of an institution such as the Council of Europe, there is magic happening? Well, yes, definitely it is happening. TRAYCE II was a 1.5-year-long journey – a training for trainers (T4T) for youth in the Council of Europe. This was the 2nd edition of this format even though the CoE has been experimenting with different formats of a long-term T4T since the 2000s. We were a group of 30 people coming from CoE member states and for many of us this was not the first time we interacted with this institution. For me – I realised I was a newbie. I didn’t know about all the mechanisms in which young people can co-create decisions in the CoE such as the Advisory Council on Youth and even though I was a former UN youth delegate myself – I didn’t know much about the CoE youth delegate programme in the Congress Sessions.

So what did I learn from this experience? Firstly, I learned that I have a lot to learn. Simply that’s how learning goes – the less you know about a subject, the more likely you are to overestimate your abilities - also known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. So, I learned about value-based learning, training design, evaluation, and delivery. As mentioned earlier I also got deeper into the work of CoE and youth work. I reflected on the role of a trainer in the democratic process, the intercultural dimension of trainers' work (especially on the EU level) and more. I co-designed and co-delivered a 5-day training on peace and I developed a game on human rights. Last but not least, I connected with inspiring humans, colleagues who turned friends, with whom I feel united in our work towards a common cause – to live in democratic, resilient and peaceful societies.

Theory U / u-lab

This one has been a challenge for me for years, first time I tried doing it was in 2016! (didn’t finish it, because at that time I didn’t understand anything or I wasn’t ready for it).

Theory U, created by Otto Scharmer, is a change management framework that guides people and organizations through a process of slowing down, deeply observing, and generating innovative solutions by shifting from reactive to more creative thinking. It is also from that same body of work that I was inspired to call this newsletter “From Ego-to-Eco”.

This course has enriched immensely both my MSLS and TRAYCE experience. It is almost like a lens I added to my everyday life. Seeing, sensing things as a system and participating in my everyday life whilst being cognizant that I’m just a piece in a puzzle much bigger than me – whether it is my family, my work, or an organisation that I’m part of or work for. This body of work is also known as “Awareness-based systems change” and even has its own journal and it's slowly finding its way into the system of the UN.

If you are curious you can start this year’s u-lab course which started last month but it is a self-paced course.

Art of Hosting Karlskrona

Here I’m going to make a bridge – because the first time I heard about Theory U was when I met the internal Community of Practitioners in the European Commission which are practitioners of the Art of Hosting and Harvesting meaningful conversation. Inside the EC it is called Participatory Design and I participated in that training in the beginning of 2020. I remember some things, but a lot of things got lost because I wasn’t ready to hear them – they sounded very abstract to me. So this year in 2024, I was eager to participate in the annual AoH Karlskrona training which is co-organised by the students of MSLS and takes place on the premises of the BTH university. Here you can read the harvest from it and you can even read the piece I wrote as a summary of my experience from Day 2. Some of the theory covered I already knew as part of MSLS but it was still useful to anchor it one more time. I especially enjoyed the last day with the designing for wiser action where I could put my forward project and receive feedback from the collective intelligence. Overall, I can say – this is not going to be my last AoH. I feel like this practice needs more time to unfold.

Systems view of life

This is another additional resource I decided to take on during my MSLS programme – the Capra course. It helped me to understand much better systemic thinking. Fritjof Capra’s book on which the course is built is a majestic learning item. A must-read for anyone who wants to dive deeper into systems thinking and wants to learn more about how to drive change. The content spans philosophy, chemistry, biology, politics, health, and so much more, effortlessly making connections between those topics. If you would like to begin to understand Capra’s ideas I recommend watching his 1990s movie “Mindwalk” which encapsulates some of his ideas. Another important personage to understand the whole book is Francisco Varela. He is an interdisciplinary researcher encompassing biology, neurosciences and philosophy and the one who coined the term “autopoiesis” or “self-creation” which refers to the ability of a system to maintain itself by producing its own parts. If the importance of this discovery sounds very abstract to you, you can check out this interview with him here where he explains some of his research. Since he died in 2001 it has been his wife that talks about his legacy e.g. in this interesting video here.

?So what's next?

Now it's time for me to make sense of everything that I have learned and from being the learner go into my other role the one of a trainer and facilitator from which position I can share all of the skills, knowledge and competence I've gathered in the last months.

For the upcoming period, I am planning to host monthly Flow games, to create a winter course for change-makers and people who want to further develop their leadership skills, as well as I am planning the next women's retreat at Altradimora for May 2025!

As I am a lifelong learner I'm always on the lookout for new interesting learning opportunities. Here I have created an overview of some courses/programmes that I found very interesting and who knows, maybe see you there!

Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet – 7-week learning journey, starting from Oct. 20 till Dec 8 2024, if you are curious you can watch the taster for the course here!

Joanna Macy’s Work that Reconnects

Sociocracy 3.0

Systems Innovation Network

Systems Practice Accummon

Erasmus Mundus

GLC Leadership Challenge* (For people that are 21-30 years old)

European Green Youth Academy

United People Global Sustainability Leadership Class of 2025* (For people that are 18-35 years old)

Ashoka Foundation?