Future Generations Graduate School: Courses

We want to take the four dimensions of empowerment: spiritual, political, social, and economic, and learn what it means to be strengthened, both as individuals and as communities. We want to know how an individual and a community develop "confidence in their own capacities." This will be accomplished through a discussion of empowerment, theory, through the use of visual media as an empowerment tool, and through selected case studies.

Beginning at Gandhi's ashram in Sevagram, India, this course explores the potential of human energy to transform community life, conservation, and social movements. It synthesizes schools of thought regarding development. It introduces an approach to community change and conservation called SEED-SCALE (Self-Evaluation for Effective Decision-making and Systems for Communities to Adapt Learning and Expand). This course examines communities successfully applying techniques associated with the Seed-Scale approach.

Social change is both an outcome of conflict and a source of conflict. This course will focus primarily on harmful forms of violence and destructive conflict that need to be managed and transformed as a part of social change initiatives. This will involve an exploration of the sources of these harmful forms of conflict, creative alternatives for addressing them, and the skills needed to implement these alternatives.