The Fighting Shoulder to Shoulder with The Poor Program is 18 months:
Period 1 - 3 months Deep Studies at RVA about the World Today Period 2 - 3 months Deep Studies at RVA about the Future Period 3 - 6 months Service Period with Humana People to People in Belize or Ecuador Period 4 - 6 months The Journal - Exames, Media production and teaching in St. Vincent
Introduction to the Program
However out of whack and outside our influence, modern globalization thrusts forward, seemingly on a course and with a speed of its own, powered by huge economic interests and directed by powerful political elites, steamrolling human needs and noble aspirations in its track, and on its way selling out of our natural and only habitat – it is, for good and for worse, our world, and we cannot just escape it, pretending to go off on a private tangent, busy with our own life, avoiding to see the consequences of world politics as they are acted out in our time, or to take a personal stand to the realities of The Poor, who constitute more than half of mankind, caught in a whirlwind of wars, hunger, illness and repression, without land, without means, without work or education, and without basic human rights.
This 18-month program of Fighting shoulder to shoulder with The Poor will take a courageous and futuristic view of the world. We will dare to look the problems and the big issues of our present time right in the eye, understanding the forces and politics at play, acknowledging the real consequences, not just seen from one place but on a global scale, and we will study and dig into the problems and potentials of our future world, not only using conventional narratives, but finding our own way to new knowledge, using own experiences and own reasoning. We will dare to dream and envision a future for We the People, while we battle with the big issues at hand, trying to point to modern, lively, inclusive and sustainable ways and solutions that we can be proud to represent.
We will study, investigate, travel to see with own eyes, and fight shoulder to shoulder with The Poor. We will get in contact with and befriend the people whom we meet. We will seek to understand and to show our own stand by practice. We will dig for the truth, we will dream, debate, hike, laugh, sweat and be challenged on all counts, and we will bring it all to the public arena, spreading our findings and creations in speech, in writing, through artistic expressions, in lively debate with people and by modern means of communication.
The program leads to an A-certificate, completed as distance learning, within the faculty of Fighting with The Poor at One World University in Mozambique.