Exchanges
Fourth World Learning Consortium
Learning Exchanges / The Repast Project / Birds of a Feather Day Camp / Institutional Exchanges
Josuha Trees ( November 2017)
Learning Exchanges
Learning Exchanges include: (1) guided travel to important regional cultural sites; (2) interdisciplinary-creative workshops; (3) mealtime conversations; and (4) ample opportunities to read, write and reflect in stunning natural and cultural geographies.
Learning Exchanges also provide each group an opportunity to conduct field research and begin preparation for a collaborative issue of the Fourth World Journal, our magazine dedicated to the creative arts.
Our Learning Consortium has helped to offer inspirational group travel. We have also enjoyed Zion, Yosemite, Joshua Tree, Death Valley and Chaco National Parks. Fourth World visited Kauai, Hawaii in 2018 and the 2019 Mount Shasta Learning Exchange took place in the stunning, inspiring beauty of the volcano. Each year, our exchanges involve creative workshops, mealtime discussions, notebook and reading exercises, cooperative seminars and group adventures.
Upcoming Learning Exchange
June 2023 Learning Exchange
(Rescheduled due to Covid-19 pandemic)
Place and Location , Citizenship and Struggle (La Serena, Coquimbo, Santiago)
This Learning Exchange to El Norte Chico of Chile, a long, slender country of sublime natural beauty. Creative activities, mealtime discussions, notebook and reading exercises, cooperative seminars and workshops and activities focus on meta-cognition and astrophysics. A three day stay in the northern Chilean desert - sleeping in geodesic domes, reading poetry and watching the night skies - is the centerpiece of a week which also includes visits to cultural, natural and historic sites in Santiago, La Serena and Coquimbo.
Kauai, Hawaii
The Repast Project
We host supper and book clubs in local communities in order to talk about books, ideas and the creative arts in unconventional learning spaces: local restaurants, teacher's homes, farms and vineyards. But why? In our age of connectivity we have little time for face-to-face conversations and deep reading.
Globally we have seen--in just one generation--a drastic decrease in all-important dinnertime conversations and a frightening rise in source illiteracy. In fact, the next generation is part of an America that seems to have no time anymore for thoughtful conversation or complex reading. The results are dire: non-readers have nearly tripled since 1978. The loss of social time and eye-to-eye group conversation conspires against today’s cyber-youth, as often they suffer from growing isolation and, understandably, are on the edge of a millennial mental health crisis.
This disengagement and dearth of "Basic Skills" does not go by unnoticed by irked businesses who complain of employees that “…do not know how to effectively carry on a conversation and are unable to do things like ask questions, listen actively and maintain eye contact.”
We have provided hundreds of students, professors and community leaders with: (1) a free gourmet meal ; (2) opportunities for meaningful cross-cultural conversation about multi-dimensional issues, books and cultural art events. One student participant said, “It was an amazing experience, most of the time I am alone and it was really great to have conversations…. I valued how… at home it felt, it’s something...people should really experience.”
““We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?””
