Background/Overview of the pilot project

The goal of the pilot project is to develop one professional development module for adult educators and civic education practitioners that explores the concepts of democracy and good governance.  It is expected that the module will be used with a variety of adult stakeholders in the Asia Pacific region, in both formal and non-formal educational settings, and will be implemented in a sustainable context.  The project team will trial this module in a selected country in the Asia Pacific, and evaluate its impact and lessons learned.

The pilot module will be written for people working in the fields of democracy or governance in the adult sector, or for people who simply want to be more informed or engaged in the political life and/or governance of the environments in which they live and work.  The target audience may include community organisers and leaders, civil society organisation leaders, government representatives and officials at all levels, policy makers and thinkers, business leaders, professionals (e.g. teachers, clergy, journalists etc.), emerging young leaders and so on.

What the “Democracy in Our Place” Module looks like

The first and last relate to implementation issues of contextualisation and evaluation, while the other four are focused on the workshop content itself.  All six Content Areas would have to be addressed in any workshop, but of course the context of the workshop would dictate how each one would be approached.

Content Area 1: Context and Invitation. This Content Area is addressed from the first stages of implementation, right up to the first days of the workshop itself.  It ensures that any workshop delivered from the module is appropriate to the audience, its needs and its expectations.

Content Area 2:  What is democracy? This Content Area addresses the principles, values and concepts of democracy, and is in essence the theoretical part of the module

Content Area 3: Democracy – the lessons learned. This Content Area looks at how the principles, values and concepts of democracy have worked (or not worked) in practical terms, addressing what lessons have been learned from how democracy has been applied in local, national and global examples.

Content Area 4: What does democracy look like? This Content Area looks at how democracy could be put into practice, the elements and systems for application.

Content Area 5: Living democracy – I will, we can. This Content Area is about applying democracy to the personal or organisational context of the participants themselves.  It involves action planning and applies the concepts explored earlier to personal circumstance.

Content Area 6: Post Workshop Assessment and Review. This Content Area is not in itself part of the workshop delivery (although there would be elements of monitoring during the workshop involved) but is about returning to the expectations.

If you would like to see sample activities from the “Democracy in Our Place” module, you need to log in, then follow the ‘curriculum’ links to ‘CEDP Web Samples’. Note: To log in to the restricted area of the web site, you need to be registered to the BRIDGE website. Please email us and request access to view these curriculum materials.

Upcoming events

• Development meeting

There is a development meeting scheduled for March 2008 which aims to contextualise the generic democracy module for the target audience (which is still being negotiated).

• Trial workshop

The trial or pilot workshop is scheduled for early May. It will be a 4-day workshop – with the target audience still to be determined.

For more information about the CEDP contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it