Families Learning Together

Hey Friends-

Greetings from Udaipur!

I am excited to let you know that we are finally ready to have our 'All Family Gathering'. The dates that have been finalized for the get-together are May 26^th to May 30^th, 2005 at Panchgani, Maharashtra. I feel that this will be a good opportunity for all of us to spend time together doing, singing, dancing, cooking, playing, digging, building and sharing things that we find meaningful in our lives. This will be an opportunity to discuss issues that are important for families that are consciously trying to walkout from institutionalized education and who want to create their own directions of learning and living. The overall purpose of the gathering is to expand learning possibilities both for our children as well as for ourselves, as parents and grandparents. We hope to have a lot of serious fun together. : )

Some of the questions that we are hoping to explore during the gathering are -

- What learning resources have inspired our families?

- In what areas of life (such as food, health, entertainment, etc.) have our families embraced the self-created instead of the ready-made?

- How are we creating different kinds of learning opportunities for our families?

- How do we as families appreciate and nurture each individuals strengths and passions?

- How can we improve communication and dialogue within our immediate families and extended families?

- How can we share our experiences and ideas with other families who are interested in deep learning?

- What questions, fears and anxieties are we all facing in our lives as we choose to learn and live without schooling? How do we deal with these?

and many, many more…Please share things that you would like to explore together. We want to co-create the program together.

I really look forward to hearing from all of you who are interested in being a part of this get-together. We are hoping to have about 15 families join us. Please put the dates on your calendar. One thing that is important for this meeting is that we all have to come with our families -- not without them -- so I need to know how many family members you will be bringing with you. I will send you more details shortly.

It would be great if we could finalize the list of families participating by the 27^th of April, 2005. Feel free to contact me or Anita Borkar (Nitinanita@sancharnet.in ) with any questions you may have.

Love,

Vidhi