CONNECTING BORDERS C O N C E P T P A P E R UWC SHORT COURSE TURKEY 2018
INTRODUCTION The world s globalization and growing interconnectedness urges young people to find spaces for intercultural exchange and dialogue. Connecting Borders empowers young people from different backgrounds and cultures to become an active and critical member of their respective communities and provides them with a platform to exchange ideas, experiences and their cultures. As our previous programs have demonstrated, participants leave the Short Course with more confidence and empathy, ready to make a change in their local environments. 2 weeks 42 participants 20+ countries Building on the success of previous editions since 2013, the UWC Short Course Turkey 2018 will touch on issues of identity and society and their several intersections, to give young participants a chance to re-think and discuss the biggest challenges facing our world today. The complexity of these themes will be explored through storytelling, transnational identity construction and the analysis of current political, economic and social issues from multiple perspectives. Furthermore, the results of these explorations will be expressed by participants through the elaboration of a tangible final project, to be implemented in their respective home communities.
Who? Where? What? The UWC Short Course "Connecting Borders" will bring together around 40 young people, between 16 and 18 years old, from Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Turkey. A dynamic, diverse and intercontinental location that provides a rich context to pursue our goals. UWC is an organization founded in 1962 with the vision of bringing together young people to address conflict through the values of community interaction and cross- cultural understanding. Over the last decades, the movement has expanded its reach to 17 schools and dozens of short courses around the world. Short courses form an integral part of the UWC mission to expand its values to a wider audience.
OBJECTIVES Spread the UWC mission and values The UWC movement makes education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future. Instill leadership Provide participants with skills in leadership, critical thinking, empathy and self-reflection. Participants leave with greater self-confidence and equipped to initiate projects on their own. Empower change-makers Empower young people to become agents of change in their communities by thinking globally and acting locally. Through civil society visits, we emphasize the importance of working together with - rather than for - local partners. Explore current issues Learn about and discuss current, social issues on a global and local scale from different perspectives. Connecting Borders, with its focus on identity, tackles a variety of topics related to discrimination, social ex-/inclusion, and human rights.
Push the comfort-zone In a caring and protected environment, participants are nonetheless faced with many new perspectives, emotions, and ways of thinking. Away from their familiar environment, they grow more self-reliant and curious. Develop talents and interests Develop participants talents and help them explore new interests. Allow participants to be creative and share their knowledge, skills and perspectives with the rest of the group. Share opportunities Give participants the space to learn about possible professional and academic fields and introduce them to other local and international programs. With a wide array of experiences, our international team mentors participants to help them pursue their dreams. Encourage new sense of self Participants leave as world citizens, eager to act. They form life-long and meaningful friendships and leave with a great support network that extends across the globe. Promote non-formal education Using non-formal education, coordinators and facilitators do not teach, but aim to set up a platform for participants and the team to learn from each other during our interactive workshops. Participants are encouraged and inspired to lead activities themselves.
COURSE PROGRAM Through interactive workshops, discussions and storytelling the course focuses on self-development and leadership. Turkey lies at the crossroads between the East and West, where cultures have met and exchanged for centuries. Youths from the Middle-East, Europe and North-Africa come together in Turkey to look at current issues related to identity, which include topics in migration, human rights and structural inequalities. This holistic approach, allows participants to be involved with the creation of the program, sharing their own interests and experiences. The program aims to connect borders on several levels: 1. The Self and Society 2. Past, Present and Future 3. Global Thinking and Local Action
The Self and Society The course analyses the various levels of identity within the self and outside in the context of societies, communities, cultures and nations. By promoting empathic listening, sharing stories and critical thinking, the program aims to improve communication and understanding between people. Past, Present, and Future Using the interesting political tensions and multicultural environment of our location, we provide participants with an understanding of the historical setting, key concepts in social issues, and community action, to create a continuous interconnected narrative of the past, present and future. Global Thinking and Local Action During the course, participants do community service and design a project to implement in their own communities. The course creates a snowball effect as participants gain the motivation and confidence to act locally while seeing the global and long-term implications of these actions.
PARTICIPATION AND RECRUITMENT Countries with existing UWC National Committees will be invited to sponsor candidates for the short course. However, students wishing to apply coming from countries without UWC representation will also be considered through a round of open applications, based on criteria in line with the UWC standard procedures. We aim for a diverse group of participants of roughly equal gender representation, coming from different countries, socio-economic backgrounds, ethnicities and religions. We are particularly keen to recruit young people who play or show an interest in playing an active role in their communities. The origin of participants of the 2017 course can be seen in the illustrated map below. Participation in the course will cost 600 Euros. However, the selection of participants will be need-blind and a limited number of scholarships will be available. Last year, more than half of the participants received a full or partial fee waiver, while another 9 participants were sponsored by their National Committee.
ORGANIZATION We use a cloud-based co-working environment. Work files are available to all members at all times and confidential files are kept secure. As a non-profit initiative all our financial documents are available for audit. During the course the program is designed to educate, inspire and create a stimulating environment for new ideas. We rely on a continuous monitoring and evaluation process from the first day of the course in order to ensure that our objectives are being achieved. After the course, the participants' final projects will be shared on our digital channels. Participants will be asked to complete a questionnaire and will be contacted after the course to follow up on the course s impact. Their feedback and other conclusions will be included in the annual report. Coordination The first stages of organization for the 2018 Short Course are being led by five coordinators from the 2017 edition. We believe our experience in last year s course will be vital for the improvement and growth of this project. We recruited additional coordinators who are familiar with the local Turkish context and will play a crucial role in establishing local partnerships. Once on-site, the whole team will be responsible for delivering activities, workshops and providing guidance and support to participants. Prior to the course, the team will gather for a week-long training in facilitation and pastoral care.
IMPACT 93% of participants identify as world citizens since the course. Below is a brief summary of our impact assessment following the 2017 Short Course. More than 50% participants felt more comfortable when it comes to social competence, teamwork, listening, public speaking, and critical thinking. More than half of the participants returned home more self-confident with increased belief that they can make changes in their communities. 81% said their knowledge about Europe increased a lot by the course; 74% said the same for the Middle East. The course also helped participants to improve leadership, writing, creativity, and self-discipline. Most importantly, we saw doubling of students who feel responsible for oneself and for others to great extent. Overall, more than 75% of participants felt more empowered after the course, and 90% of students feel at ease while connecting with people from different backgrounds. The course thus produced more conscious empowered individuals that feel comfortable delivering change and living in diverse settings. After the course, participants were more likely to identify less with their country but more as world citizens. 96% of participants said they would "absolutely" recommend the short course to friends.
MEET THE TEAM Akın Aytekin Akın attended Red Cross Nordic UWC between 2004 and 2006. After completing his BA in economics and political science at Westminster College, Missouri, he returned to Turkey in 2010 and started working as a journalist. After working for the Wall Street Journal and Reuters News Agency, he is now an editor for BloombergHT Turkish-language TV. Akın currently resides in Istanbul, accompanied at home by an energetic little French bulldog. Svenja Budziak Svenja graduated from UWC-USA in 2012. She earned a Bachelor's degree with a double major in Islamic Studies and History at Kiel University and went on to pursue her Master's degree while she picked up an additional Bachelor's degree in archaeology. She currently interrupted her graduate studies for the Bartos Fellowship where she works with high school students and does research on Cultures of Remembrance. Following the fellowship she will be interning with the German Historical Museum in Berlin. Rabail Habib Rabail attended UWC Red Cross Nordic in 2010 and graduated from Northwestern University in 2016 with a major in Radio, Television and Film and a minor in the Business Institutions Program. Working as a Film Producer, she hopes to produce content that starts important conversations and brings matters of identity, gender and culture to the forefront. She had an amazing experience working on the UWC Short Course Bulgaria 2017 and is excited to continue her work with this course. Melih Meriç Melih is a first year student at Bennington College in Vermont, USA. He is focusing on Visual Arts, Animation and Queer Studies. He is a class of 2017 graduate from UWC Maastricht and has participated in many galleries and exhibitions throughout his experience in the Netherlands. He likes to create work that is focused around cultural identity and heritage, as well as self identity. Before UWC, he studied at TEVITÖL in Turkey and is excited to be a part of organizing this year s Short Course.
Petr Knor Petr Knor is a passionate explorer, UWC Mostar alumnus, and a lifelong learner from Prague who attempts to test his limits to understand more about his place in the world. He is currently a second-year political science student at the Central European University in Budapest. He served as a facilitator at SC Bulgaria and SC Belgium in 2017. In 2018, Petr is pumped to be helping with SC Malta, Belgium, and Turkey. Kim van Lookeren Campagne Kim has a Mexican mother and Dutch father and grew up in Europe and the USA. She graduated from UWC Atlantic College and has a Masters in Social and Cultural Anthropology from University College London. She has an interest in migration and conducted research on issues related to refugee acceptance. Recently, she did an internship at the ethnographic museum in Leiden, where she developed a passion for promoting intercultural understanding through education. Lara Savenije Lara was born and raised in a small town in the Netherlands but currently lives in the cosmopolitan city of Istanbul. She graduated from UWC Mostar and completed a degree in Middle East Studies at Brown University. She since completed a research fellowship at the Migration Research Center at Koc University. Lara has been coordinating the UWC Short Course Turkey since 2016 and is currently assisting a short course initiative in Lebanon. Irem Soysal Irem is a graduate of the UWC Short Course Turkey and UWC Dilijan College. She currently lives in New York City and studies Psychology in Columbia University. Irem is deeply interested in building bridges between cultures and has taken part in many initiatives on peacemaking and conflict resolution. In her free time, she is involved in performance arts, gender and sexuality related activism, and she enjoys exploring small restaurants around the city. Gökçen Tuncer Gökçen is a Turkish journalist born in 1985. After completing her bachelor's in Economics in Turkey, she moved to Sweden to pursue a master degree in Global Journalism at Örebro University. Between 2013 and 2015, she worked at Al Jazeera Turk as a producer and since 2015, she is one of the editors of BusinessHT.com, the second digital platform of BloombergHT. She is specialized in economics, cultural relations and digital media. In her free time, she enjoys lindy-hopping.
CONTACT US The organizational team can be reached through the following channels: Email: info@short- courseturkey.uwc.org Website: short- course- turkey.uwc.org Phone number: +90 544 426 7449 (Whatsapp or Call) Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/uwcscturkey Instagram: @uwcscturkey