Delivered to over 100 people in the last 12 months Progress School teaches people how to take charge of their own personal and professional development and how to build and use their own networks to get the learning experiences that they need to realise their ambitions.
Each Progress School comprises 6 x 2 hour sessions where a group of 12-15 people from a diverse range of backgrounds come together to learn how to make progress in their own lives. The diversity is important.
Progress School is flexible, so participants can drop into as many or as few sessions as they are able or need to. Although we do teach some models and frameworks for development most of the learning is done through the peer networks that develop at the School.
Each Progress School costs about £3000 to deliver over a 6 month period and would impact directly on around 30 participants. Progress School operates on ‘pay what you can – but free is fine’ basis, as it is vital to me that it is accessible to even the poorest members of our community. Currently a 6 month Progress School may generate £200 of revenue from participants.
Benefits
Participants:
- learn how to actively manage their own development and shape their own futures
- meet a diverse and varied peer group of all ages and a wide range of backgrounds – leading to rich and varied peer learning
- build learning networks contributing to community cohesion and the social capital
- learn how to develop synergies between their own development goals and those of significant others such as employers, spouses and teachers
- develop practical and powerful learning agendas
- plan a series of experiments that enable them to try out what they have learned
My ambition is to provide Progress Schools on a pay what you can but free is fine basis wherever there is an invitation. This will be done by training other Progress School facilitators and building this role into a profession.
be careful what you wish for….
The mayor of Toronto Rob Ford on Cyclists who choose to swim with the sharks….
and here he is on homelessness…
and from closer to home…
or
Genius little film….
“Think back to how you reacted when you were given your first bicycle. Did you question the fact that it only had two wheels? Were you concerned that your parents had invited you to ride on something so inherently unstable? Did you ask for a full list of risks, and what had been done to mitigate them? Did you ask to see a business case to prove it would be better than your tricycle?……. I suspect you didn’t.”
Arvinder Dhesi from Aviva
It was a real privilege to be invited to take part in the British Dutch Dialogue on Making Successful Cities earlier this year in Rotterdam.
The full conference report APELDOORN 2011_Final Report
Been having some problems with our bin collections in Leeds!
Mike Chitty 