Newsletter

Newsletter November 2023

Dear Transition Maker,

We're thrilled to share our recent adventures with you. In this edition of our newsletter, you'll discover:

🌟 A recap of the global IDG Summit in Stockholm and our community meet-up, the IDG Summit viewing party in Amsterdam;

🔧 An invitation to complete the online form if you’re interested in adding your tool to the Transition Makers Toolbox and available to join the upcoming co-creation sessions on 8 November and 24 January in Amsterdam;

🔍 The “In Practice” spotlight on the Da Vinci programme of the University of Utrecht and the EWUU alliance;

📥 New feature alert: you can now download the entire content of a tool in a single, user-friendly PDF file;

📆 Mark your calendar for two upcoming workshops: ‘Unlock the Potential of the Toolbox for Your Education’, on 22 January 2024 in Eindhoven (the Netherlands) and on 20 February 2024, online, for those unable to join us in person.

We can't wait to explore, innovate and connect with you in the exciting months ahead.

Reflecting on the IDG Summit

Afterglow session at the Epicenter in Stockholm

A few weeks ago, the Toolbox team attended the global IDG Summit in Stockholm to connect with like-minded people, institutions and organisations worldwide. Being present at the Summit was an inspiring and hopeful experience, bringing a great diversity of inspiration for inner development - such as building resilience as an antidote for climate anxiety, cultivating leadership skills, climate literacy, using radical imagination and integrating arts.

In the Collaboration Garden and during the Afterglow session on Friday, we had many great conversations with the people we’ve met, working in the world of education from within and outside the Netherlands.

Guido and Jasper of our Toolbox team hosted a community meet-up in Amsterdam for the IDG Dutch Higher Education Hub, where several teachers and students joined in a live video call with our team members who were there at the Summit.

Following this, the participants, coming from various Dutch higher education institutions such as UvA, EWUU, VU and Windesheim, attended two sessions online and engaged in discussions about the role of IDGs in their education and common challenges and successes.

We hope during next year’s Summit, there will be a bigger focus on the role that education of the current and the next generations can play in inner development, and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. What are your ideas?

Share your reflections with us by email

Co-creation Sessions:
Add your Tool to the Toolbox

Are you an educational professional at a Dutch higher education institution, and would you like to add a new tool to the Toolbox?

If you have a teaching or learning activity paired with an assessment method, related to societal transitions and one of the IDGs, that you would like to add to the Transition Makers Toolbox, this session is for you!

It could be a tool that is new to you that you want to start using in your education practice, or a tool that you are already working with and would like to share in and/or further develop for the Transition Makers Toolbox.

The first co-creation session will take place on 8 November from 9 am – 1 pm. The follow-up session is on 24 January 2024 from 9 am – 1 pm. Both sessions are held on-site in Amsterdam.

Please note, it is important to know the source of the tool and to have permission to share the tool in the Toolbox.

This guarantees a key characteristic of our Toolbox: the material we will share in the Toolbox is open source.

This means that the tools we end up sharing will be accessible for anyone to use, redistribute and modify at no cost.

Interested in co-creating? Contact us!

In Practice: Da Vinci Project

Initiated at Utrecht University, this educational experiment aims to educate sustainability change-makers through hands-on learning by prototyping and iterative testing in real-world settings, fostering a “fail forward” mentality.
Watch the video below to learn more:

New Feature

It is now possible to download the content of each tool in the Transition Makers Toolbox in its entirety, instead of separate documents. Simply click on the blue ‘Download PDF’ button and save it to your computer!

Mark your Calendar

Workshop: Unlock the Potential of the Toolbox for Your Education

on 22 January 2024 from 3 to 5 PM

at the campus of the Eindhoven University of Technology

In this interactive session, you will discover the features of the Transition Makers Toolbox and find out how to use the tools in your teaching, so you can start putting the materials into practice.

Online Workshop: Unlock the Potential of the Toolbox for Your Education

on 20 February 2024 from 3 to 4.30 PM (Central European Time), on Zoom

In this online session, you will discover the features of the Transition Makers Toolbox and find out how to use the tools in your teaching, so you can start putting the materials into practice.

Join our LinkedIn community to become a member of the IDG Dutch Higher Education Hub and learn, innovate, practice and share the application of tools or share stories, recordings of lectures, event designs and presentations with other Transition Makers.

Meet the Transition Makers

Sanli Faez

“As a physicist at the Debye Institute for Nanomaterials Research (Utrecht University), I study the motion of ions and electrons at the nanoscale and developed a course for the Master’s programme in Experimental Physics, in which I combine the development of technical skills for designing and running a scientific experiment from scratch, with a tool of open collaboration and persuasive communication in teams. This was the basis for the tool I added to the Toolbox, ‘The Power of Storytelling’.

Most people do not like to be told what to do, but are happy to be convinced that they can do the right thing. Stories are much more effective in convincing others to collaborate with you on a shared purpose. To take a leading role in tackling grand scientific and technological challenges you need to be a great storyteller.”

Get in touch with Sanli

Anke de Vrieze

“I work as a knowledge and learning advisor at Wageningen University and the Centre for Unusual Collaborations. To achieve a more sustainable future, I believe we should not only think from our human perspective but take non-human perspectives into account as well, such as animals, plants, rivers, trees and oceans.

For the Toolbox, I therefore contributed the ‘Inviting Non-Human Stakeholders’ tool. I have used this in the Master’s programme in International Development and the Master’s in Organic Agriculture. The learning activity allows students to empathically engage with non-human beings and entities. To embody a different perspective, students get to work in a creative manner, using imagination.”

Get in touch with Anke