[TimorLesteStudies] Coming Soon: Bridging Peoples Academy

[Deborah Cummins]

Dear friends and colleagues,

My name is Deborah Cummins and I'm the Director of an agency called
Bridging Peoples (https://bridgingpeoples.com.) Our little team has been
working for some time towards creating the Bridging Peoples online Academy,
and Bridging Peoples Network - and I'm excited to announce that we're very
close to launching our first Academy e-course! It's been a long time coming
after I retired our previous e-course called "Working With Communities". So
while we've been very quiet for the past year (hello COVID-19!), there's
been a lot of activity behind the scenes.

I'm reaching out to you as academics, 'prac-ademics' and aid & development
practitioners because I hope what we're about to put out will be of use to
your research students/local partners/staff members/colleagues, who may
want some additional support in how to work with communities (whether as
researchers, program managers, or community workers).

As this is a Timor Studies list, I should emphasise that the courses in
this Academy are *not* Timor-specific. However, having lived in Timor-Leste
for 10 years, I can guarantee that the issues that are dealt with in the
Academy are common throughout Timorese communities - I've personally
encountered them many times in my own community work and research. They
also reflect common issues I've encountered in other parts of the world,
including Syria, Egypt, Turkey, parts of Africa, and various Aboriginal
Australian nations.

Here's a quick look at how this work is going to go down over the next 6-9
months:

   - In about a month, we'll be launching a 4-week online course called
   "Principles of Good Local Development". It's a general course, covering a
   lot of the big questions of community work, including tricky issues such as
   community dependency, getting past the binary of top-down and bottom-up
   work, and working across cultures & worldviews, in a very accessible and
   practical way. While it's short, I've spent a huge amount of time pulling
   it together and getting the epistemology right without falling into jargon
   or academic-speak. I'm very proud of it.


   - At the end of the course, students will be invited into our Bridging
   Peoples Network, which is a membership platform hosted on our website. The
   Network is limited to people who've already done one of our courses, to
   make sure we're all talking the same local development/community engagement
   'language.' In the future, there will be a membership fee, but right now
   it's free for six months for alumni - to help build up numbers and make it
   a living, thriving space. I've got big dreams for this Network, as a
   container for people to flexibly collaborate with each other and academics
   across theoretical, sectoral and geographic borders on different research &
   consulting projects, with lots of resources and discussion forums on
   different topics. Strictly a locally engaged, anti-racist space, so while
   it's open to all alumni there will be extra support for in-country experts
   (a term I prefer to 'national' staff) in flexing their muscles as
   consultants, researchers, experts - and being properly recognised for their
   expertise. The idea is that members will do some projects themselves, just
   using the Network as an additional resource as they wish; other projects
   will be done collaboratively with Bridging Peoples. My dream is that,
   ultimately, all of our Bridging Peoples project work will be carried out
   via this Network, which I consider to be a better mode of engagement.


   - But we've first got to get the Network started. Over the next six
   months, I'll be using this Network to give a lot of love and group coaching
   to members - essentially asking them to hit me up with whatever problems
   they've got, or ideas they have, so we can work together on them. This
   means they'll get a whole lot of love and group coaching from me for free -
   well, for the price of the initial Principles course (which is fairly
   inexpensive and will be discounted to celebrate the Academy launch.) I'm
   doing this because it will help me: our Network discussions will inform how
   I design our three upcoming Local Development in Practice group coaching
   programs, to be launched in 2022 (essentially making it a co-design
   process). These group coaching programs are intensive - probably 3-6 months
   - so I need to make sure they are as contextually relevant as
   possible, fitting with people's actual needs.


   - To build up momentum, I will be opening the Principles course for
   three intakes in 2021 (ie. every second month) and this 'deal' combining
   the course with this intensive group coaching experience in the Network
   will likely only be for the first and possibly second launch. It's unlikely
   I'll extend it to the third launch, as I expect 2022 to be all about
   settling into practices that are more sustainable (relying less on my
   personal one-on-one involvement.) But I'm super-excited about this more
   intensive and personalised engagement that I have planned over the next few
   months!

The main page for the Academy is http://academy.bridgingpeoples.com. The
web pages outlining each course will hopefully be live in about a week.
These will give information about timing, course cost, module breakdown,
and allow you to register (via credit or debit card) for the Principles of
Good Local Development course. So if you're interested, please just hit let
me know and I'll be sure to contact you when we're fully online.

I know not everyone will be in a position to jump on board. We're all busy
and in different ways struggling with the pandemic. But I wanted to let you
know these plans early, so if you manage training budgets for research
students, staff or local partners and/or know people who might benefit, you
have time to chat with people and get things organised. If you can think of
particular people who might want to know about this for their research
students, staff or local partners (or themselves), please do feel free to
share this email with them.

I know this has been a long email; thank you for reading to the end. Thank
you for your time, and if you have any questions, please do get in touch.

Very best wishes, and stay safe,

Deborah
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