About IDE | Activities | Database | Schools | IDEC | Links | Forums IDEC 2004 India Details To all of you at IDEC: Have finally negotiated my consultancy with UNICEF for the next four months, so that I can give my time to IDEC. Today is my first day of this new found freedom! Thanks for being patient. I know some of you were anxious and rightly so, but I thought it would be better to complete all that was to be done and then be free for these few months before IDEC. Let me give you some of the details about IDEC 2004 "Shanti in Education": The registration fee will be USD 400 for adults and USD 250 for under-18 year olds. This includes accommodation, food for the entire ten days and the kit for the conference. Even if people come for a shorter period, the fee will be the same. For people from India, the cost will be INR (Indian National Rupees) 4500 for adults and INR 3000 for under-18 year olds. Accommodation: Places for stay have been booked at the venue where there are guest rooms and hostel rooms. About 150 will be able to stay there. Another hostel has been booked at a training centre run by an NGO (non-government organisation) about 10 mins from the venue. Another 60 will be accommodated here. There are other institutions nearby with which discussions are ongoing. Home-stay around the area is also being finalised. If some would like to stay in a hotel, we are negotiating with a nearby hotel to get a good price. But hotel stay will be at your own cost. Please look up idec2004.com web site for the tariff structure of hotels in Bhubaneshwar. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and tea/coffee twice a day will be served at the venue. A cafeteria will also be open where anything extra required could be bought. A variety of food, Indian, from other parts of India too, western & Chinese will be served over the ten days, with the basics being available everyday. We are trying to get a Japanese cook too for a day or two! Fruits and cooked salads will be served with every meal. Potable drinking water will be made available for all participants. Transport: You will be picked up from Bhubaneshwar airport and the railway station. There will be an IDEC desk at both the places on the 2nd & 3rd of Dec, 2004. If you are coming later or earlier, once we get the details from you, arrangements will be made to receive you. Whoever meets you will have the IDEC placard or banner. There will be daily conference buses available for people staying outside the campus. You will also be dropped at the airport/station for your departure. Enroute to Bhubaneshwr we can also help to organise transport, accommodation & visits to education projects/schools at Banglore, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkatta and Mumbai for which you will have to pay the costs. Communication Facilities at the venue: Internet will be available from 1600 hrs to 0800 hrs with about 40 computer lines open to the participants. During the rest of the time there maybe only 2 or 3 free for any urgent work. Coupons will be given on payment (INR 15 or perhaps less per hour). INR 42-43 equal to USD 1. A Public Call Office for local, national and international telephone calls will be put up. The charges have to be paid directly for which you get a printout bill. Flip charts, OHPs (overhead projectors) and LCD for power point presentations will also be available for your presentations if required. Let us know what you will need for your sessions. TV, CDs, DVDs can be watched or listened to whenever you want to, perhaps in a special room. Please bring any that you want to share with the community. Conference Office: The IDEC office will be manned through the day and other numbers will be given to you for emergencies or any help that you may require. Computers, phones, photocopying machine and so on will also be available at the office through the conference period. As of now you can call Ms Amukta Mahapatra on her mobile, 91-674-3217080 at anytime (allow me to sleep for 6hrs till the 3rd of Dec!) or Ms Snigdha (you could call her Lily) Pattnaik on her mobile, 91-674-3350602. Even if we don't pick up the phone, in case we are taking classes or driving or whatever, the missed call will be registered and we will call you back asap. Programme: Soon after breakfast, the community will gather every morning around 9.30am. After this there will be two sessions of one and a half-hours each. This will be followed by lunch. After lunch, there will be a two-hour session. There will be a break to enjoy the evening and after an early dinner around 6.30pm there will be cultural programmes or special events or speakers. Each of the sessions will most probably have parallel sessions depending on what you all want to offer and share. Please write in to say what you would like to present. There will be forums with presentations and discussions around particular specific themes. As of now the themes are: Principles & Practice of Democratic Education: The Indian Experience (Learning in Ancient India, Gandhi ideas on education, Rabindranath Tagore & Shantiniketan, Aurobindo, J. Krishnamurti, Montessori in India, David Horsburgh & Neel Bagh, Childhood in India) The Preparation & Training of the Educator Please let me know if any of you would like to present at the above forums. I am hoping Yaacov, Jerry, Kagekisan and others will do some sessions. Anything else? Would you like some sessions on Indian music? Sports? Games etc: There is a gymand a hall for yoga at the venue. Cricket is almost a religion in India and there is space for net practice. Volleyball & baseball can also be played. A field nearby is being cleared for playing football/soccer. Swimming will be possible at two hotels that are about 10 mins away. You may have to pay for it. We will also put up a table tennis table for Jerry and his team! Traditional Indian games will be taught and played. Please bring some games from your region along with you. If they are written out with some illustrations, we can put it together for all the participants. We are hoping to have sing-along sessions, so if you have some folk or community songs that we can sing together, please bring a collection. This too can be put together for distribution both as cassettes and in a printed form. Crafts & Performing Arts: There will be some ongoing sessions on clay work, art skills and community dancing. Be ready to get messy. Specific rooms and areas will be assigned for each activity/session so that there is not too much time spent in searching and finding the locations. Individuals, education programmes/projects and schools will also have the space, as usual, to do their presentations. Please let me know what you would like to present and the preferable dates. If you could send me an abstract, it will help the team working on the programme. Documenatation: We are planning on documenting the sessions, which will then be made available on DVD. We are still discussing the technology, so if any of you have some ideas, do let me know. This should do for the time being. Do get back to me with suggestions etc. Amukta Mahapatra home