1. What has been happening in the LEARN Function in 2011
1.1 The issues that the Constellation explored in 2011
A developing idea of community as we move into the world of Community Life Competence. The opportunity that this opens for us and the tension that it creates.
The Constellation for AIDS Competence came into existence when its Charter was signed in Geneva on 8 December 2004.
The board of this organisation updated its charter on 5 August 2011 and its name became simply 'The Constellation'.
For some members, that simple change of name encapsulates the journey of the Constellation over the 7 years of its existence. If there is a single thing that is clear to all of us, it is that our approach of appreciating the strengths of communities has an application far beyond HIV/AIDS. The possibilities and the opportunities that open up to us with this recognition seem to expand almost daily.
Here is just one example. The World Fish Centre is concerned with the preservation of sustainable fish stocks around the world. We are having a wonderful discussion with the World Fish Centre about a collaboration in 2012. This quotation from the leader of the World Fish Centre explains why.
"People participation is not really the answer to our problem. Their participation is nothing more than their contribution to our project. From now on, we have to participate in the people's response. We have to be part of their process."
The power of local response links communities around the world. And it doesn't really matter whether the response is HIV/AIDS or sustainable fish stocks.
As we work to understand the reach of our approach, we are also challenged to remain true to the ideals of the 'Constellation for AIDS Competence'.
A continuing dialogue about the relationship between a process and a way of thinking and a way of working (SALT)
The roots of the Constellation are many and diverse and the debate that this creates within the organisation is a great strength. CLCP is the Community Life Competence process. And our way of working is characterised by the acronym SALT. The seamless integration of the two approaches would represent a great step forward for the Constellation.
That challenge is a wonderful opportunity for new and recent members of the Constellation. It is possible for them to leave behind a vocabulary that is linked to our roots and to create an approach that is simply that, an approach.
The Constellation is a global movement. Our movement will be supported by a network of individuals spread around the world
Since it was created in 2004, the Constellation has been supported by a small group of individuals with a recognisable centre. In 2011, circumstances led us to look for another way to organise this support. That exploration led us to recognise that there was a global network of individuals who were enthusiastic to contribute to the Constellation, either for payment or on a voluntary basis.
During 2011, the work programme for 2012 was divided into distinct packages and in 2012 more than 40 Constellation members are working on the packages that they have the skills and the enthusiasm to deliver. This is a further example of our growing understanding of the capacity of communities to respond to challenges and to take action.
1.2 The work of the Learn function in 2011
The major activity of the learn function in 2011 was the development of an updated version of the Blended Learning programme. You can find more details of this project on the dedicated section of the report on Blended Learning.
The pressure for a new version of Blended Learning arises from the simple fact that the Constellation has changed dramatically during the 4 years since the programme was designed. The programme is a useful tool to show what has changed and what has remained constant in the Constellation.
The most obvious change has been from 'AIDS Competence' to 'Community Life Competence' and our programme had to reflect that change.
The most obvious constant has been the emphasis on a Way of Working and a Way of Thinking that is characterised by the acronym SALT.
A less obvious pressure has been our inability to update the Blended Learning programme in response to the changes in the Constellation. The current structure of the programme has meant that it is too cumbersome to support a programme of regular updates with the resources that we have available.
During the first part of the year, we worked on the design of a new version of the programme that would allow us to meet these challenges. During the second part of the year, we began to develop an updated version of Blended Learning based on the new model. In our plan, the new version would have been completed by the end of 2011. Unfortunately, the transformation in the way we would carry out our work programme in 2012 that is discussed elsewhere in the report meant that we could not direct we could not direct the necessary resources to complete the project by the end of year. The revised date for completion of the project is now May 2012.
The second major activity of the learn function in 2011 was to design a process by which the Constellation began to learn from its experiences
The Constellation places great emphasis on 'Learning'—after all, the L in SALT stands for Learn. We encourage communities to learn from their experiences and to share that knowledge with their peers. And yet, within the Constellation we do not have a formal process by which we learn from our experiences and use them to improve our performance.
The good reason for this absence is that this remains a significant challenge. It is very easy to produce endless 'pages' of material of 'best practice', 'lessons learned' or 'AARs', but they do not translate easily into an organisation that consistently learns on the basis of its experience. The non-hierarchical nature of the organisation means that this a particular challenge for the Constellation. We can move forward only on the basis of the consensus of our dispersed community.
In 2011, we designed 2 projects that will be implemented during 2012 to explore the challenges and to produce results during 2012. One project will seek to organise what we have learned to date on a set of generic practices for the CLCP. The second will concentrate on the facilitation of CLCP and will be organised around the (updated) structure of Blended Learning.
2. Blended Learning
2.1 Blended Learning in 2011
People used Blended Learning during 2011 in ways that were far more imaginative than when we designed the programme. We now see the exercises in Blended Learning being used in the training programme of the country teams. We see the text of Blended Learning being translated into Russian and the printed Russian text being used in workshops in Russian cities. In Mali, the printed version in French has become the usual way of working with the programme. In fact, we are losing control of the way in which the programme is used and that is excellent news.
If we consider the formal use of Blended Learning, Guyana and Singapore were the most intensive users of the system. The programme with support from Constellation coaches has turned out an essential element in the establishment of Community Life Competence in those countries. The engagement of the participating groups has been intense both in the Skype conversations or in the forums.
At the end of 2011 and at the start of 2012, we are seeing approximately 20 people working on the Blended Learning programme in any one month. Some are working through the programme in a disciplined way, others are selecting the material they choose to work on.
2.2 The new version of Blended Learning
It has been apparent for some time that we needed to produce a new version of Blended Learning and the production of that updated version has been the major challenge for the Learn Team in 2011.
The most obvious motive for the new version of the programme was that the Constellation had changed. The Constellation was now concerned with Community Life Competence, while Blended Learning remained focused on AIDS Competence.
But there were other pressures for change. We had found that we did not have the resources to maintain the current version with its 3 languages (English, French and Spanish) in 3 formats (private coach supported site, public site and CD).
These needs have led to the development of a fundamentally new version of the programme that can be described as modular in structure, rather than narrative based. But, more importantly, the structure and content is now much more faithful to the Constellation way of working. We encourage communities to learn from their own experiences and the experiences of their peers. Once we recognise that a group that goes through Blended Learning is itself a community then it becomes clear that the programme must be based around this concept of learn-and-share. Thus the group that follows the Blended Learning programme learns from the experience of accompanying a community as it goes through the Community Life Competence process. And it also learns from the experiences of other communities and other Constellation coaches.
In our plan the new version of the programme was going to be ready for testing at the start of 2012, but the reorganisation in the way in which we deliver the work programme in 2012 has led to a significant delay. The intention is to introduce the new version of Blended Learning during the second quarter of 2012.
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