Background & Description

Through its new learning approach, the GTZ-Summer Course, ‘Sustainable Innovations in India’ aims at introducing participants from all over India to the concept of sustainable development, its approach and implementation in India. “Sustainable Innovations in India” is part of the UN-Decade ‘Education for Sustainable Development’ (ESD)-project, “Between Lecture Hall & Project Works”, GTZ-Berlin. The Summer Course in India will be the fifth within this framework after Vietnam, Egypt, Brazil, and Peru and would focus on strengthening sustainable links between researchers and policy makers as well as strengthening the scientific and institutional capacities in developing countries.

By introducing new teaching and educational methods based on peer-learning and inter-disciplinary training for students with different cultural and technical backgrounds, the Summer Course meets the requirements of the current labor market and responds to India’s needs for creative and decisive intellectuals, future decision-makers and representatives of their country within the increasingly international governance-framework.

The four-week program will introduce participants to the following thematic areas:

Governance: Think globally, act locally
Concepts for Urban Sustainability and its Implementation
Concepts for Water Resource Management and its Implementation
Concepts for Climate Change Adaption and Mitigation and its Implementation

Structure of the GTZ Summer Course

The duration of the Summer Course will be from 4th-29th May 2009 and will take place in the following locations:

Hyderabad: In the first week, the political framework, state-of-the-art methods and peer-learning techniques and best practices will be presented to the students, while the above mentioned themes will be tackled in learning-dialogues during the second week.
Tirupati: Using the newly acquired techniques, the students will carry out action research tasks during excursions in the third week. Ongoing projects will be visited to see the practical side of development and experience the reality of project implementation.
Delhi: During the fourth and final week, the learning results of each group will be consolidated and presented at a public symposium at The Institute of Social Sciences in Delhi.

Objective

The summer course aims to contribute towards sustainable development in India through bridging the communication gap within research and its implementation at policy level. Through improved communication and networking the mutual benefits could be achieved at different levels with relatively small efforts.


The Summer Course intends to introduce to PhD-students, junior researchers and junior experts that whatever subject they study and whatever field they work in, their activities are a contribution to the overall sustainable development of their country and its society and to highlight that in the process of globalization, everybody’s life and activities are bound to, and influenced by, international processes.


Methodology

In order to achieve such ambitious goals in a short period of time, all available knowledge in the learning environment would be utilized. Thus all participants would be experts for sharing their experiences and skills in order to contribute to the success of the learning process.

Blended learning: To arrive well prepared at the phase of attendance, work is going to start some weeks before on a virtual learning platform where the participants meet and come to know each other.
Peer learning: In Hyderabad the participants, all with interesting and relevant backgrounds, will meet each other personally. The learning methodology guarantees that all the participants will contribute with their knowledge and experiences to the construction of a new knowledge base which will be complemented by the inputs of experts of various academic backgrounds as well as through work experience in different subjects.

Partnerships

The Summer Course "Sustainable Innovations in India" is being prepared and organized in close cooperation with TERI, JNU, IISC, CEE, EPTRI, CEPT, other institutes and GTZ-India.

Costs

It may be noted that full board facilities including all meals and accommodation will be provided for all the selected participants during the entire duration of the Summer Course. GTZ will also cover travel costs to and from the venue of the Summer Course. For travels up to 200 km, the train fare in 2nd AC class will be reimbursed upon submission of the used tickets (in original). For travel over 200 km, air travel will be covered and tickets organised by GTZ. Further, participants will receive a lump sum payment of Rs 7,000/- for their participation in the Summer Course.