Bridging theory and practice. Summer School participants reflect on month of learning and engagement

What happens when a group of Indians, Indonesians, Ugandans and Dutch – as different as can be - are locked up in a classroom for a month to talk about identity, religion, human rights and development? Read how it had an impact on how people think, work and relate to their social and political environment after going back to normal life – one month after the Yogyakarta Summer School.

As part of the Promoting Pluralism Knowledge Programme, Hivos supports this Summer School for young academics and civil society activists who are eager to reflect on their own work in development. The course, taught at master level, is a 4 week full time program of lectures, literature study, excursions and discussion. The topics range from human development theories such as the capability approach of Amartya Sen to actually developing personal capabilities as self-awareness, dialogue and empowerment.

This programme makes it a very intensive capacity building initiative which we - the team behind the Promoting Pluralism Knowledge Programme - hope makes the participants familiar with the complexities of the pluralism debate but also energizes to become the (Ghandian) ‘change we want to see’.

Ugandan Ambrose Kibuuka, youth mentor in Kampala, wonders how to connect the ‘scattered heaps of personal opinions, positions and questions’ which the Yogya experience produced. Read his take on the recent fightings between youth and the police in his country in ‘How I see the Uganda riots’.

Ivana Prazic, PhD-student in Indonesia, finds herself torn between ‘critical thinking’ and the immense pleasure of celebrating ‘tasty, exorbitantly costly appetizers’, massages and scuba diving of an after Summer School holiday in Bali. Find out whether ‘Yogya’ managed to produce ‘radical transformations’ in ‘Beads, pants, and scuba diving’.

“What I found in this summer school is the belief that things will change and things will change fundamentally” says Kevin Pijpers, student at the University for Humanistics in The Netherlands. In his view, the way of living in Europe is build on an illusion of personal autonomy. Why? Read ‘My death called Summer School’.

Tabitha Naisiko from Uganda describes the Summer School as “a reflective process on the kind of development work we do in our own countries” but at the same time a “departure from academic utopia”. Back home, Tabitha returned to the community she studies for her PhD, the Sabiny in Bukwo, Eastern Uganda. Get to know more about the responsibility she feels to address marginalization in practice in ‘Let the Sabiny have their community radio.’

Indonesian Sherria Ayuandini has gotten a Clintonian insight through the Summer School: “It’s the language, stupid!” - talking about the duality of theory and practice. For her, many more practitioners should study what pluralism is in the classroom and - at the same time - academicians should actually go to the field. Read how their shared discomfort would allow them to experience the language of the other in ‘Unfinished Readers and Burnt Fingers’.