GIN Regional Forums

SAVE THE DATE!

GIN Regional Forum, International School of Dusseldorf

31 Jan & 1 Feb 2020

Contact: GIN2020@isdedu.de

A Global Issues Network (GIN) regional forum will be held at the International School of Dusseldorf from the 31st of January to the 1st of February 2020. The forum will start at 08:00 am on the Friday and finish on Saturday at around 15:00. The cost of our conference is very reasonable, only 65 Euros. We request that a maximum of 10-15 of your students, as stated before, grades 10-12 come to our conference. We also have options for hotels close to the school that we can send you if you are fully committed.

Under our theme of LOCAL SUSTAINABILITY, our topics will look at other specifics:

• Urbanization (How should we structure the modern city?)

  • Urbanization is looking at the structuring of our cities, both in the future and present (possibly in the past). Specifically, within the sessions, we will look at resources and the factors that go into our resources. If there is extra time, the groups will look at how growth can factor into resources.

• Demographics (How can we encourage refugees to integrate locally?)

  • Demographics is looking at a variety of social issues, and within these sessions, we will look at specifically education and refugees. Through these lenses, we can learn about how a variety of perspectives can help to integrate refugees into our societies. If time permits, the groups will also tie in geopolitical conflict and refugees.

• Waste (How does your lifestyle cost your city)

  • Waste is something that humans produce in almost every action they take. Through Modernization, our waste problem has exceeded the solutions and systems we have put in place. During the sessions, we will be discussing how our lifestyles affect our cities by looking at waste in 2 ways: emissions and prevention. If time allows the groups, we will also discuss industrial symbiosis.

Our conference will focus on networking between schools and collaborating to find solutions to these local issues. Our conference is much different than other GIN conferences as we do not ask your students to create a presentation on a global issue. Instead, your students will be experiencing an open debate regarding solutions to these issues.

The only preparation that we ask of your students is to read through the given research reports and, possibly, do some research into the issues within their own cities.

Each one of your students will be given the choice to choose one of the three available global issues to look into during the two days. For each global issue, there will be two groups of students looking at those global issues (6 groups in total for 3 global issues). On Friday, the groups will meet and debate separately but on Saturday, the two groups will meet. On Friday, the groups will meet three times and on Saturday the groups will meet once before presenting what they have to the rest of the groups. In each group, there will be chairs to watch the discussion and guide the students to realistic, local solutions.

Regarding our speakers, some of our speakers that have already committed are the following:

• Ayesha Keller- the founder of Better Days, an NGO with a focus on helping immigrants

• A local refugee- a woman with a success story of moving from a terror-ridden country to Germany

• An ISD parent- a parent that started the Rhine Clean-up at ISD who is extremely focused on helping to sustain our local environment

• A member from the ARUP- a company with a focus on how to create buildings and cities in a way that is environmentally friendly

• And many other speakers with deep knowledge into our local society’s issues

Feel free to email us (at GIN2020@isdedu.de) if you have any further questions.

With warm regards,

The ISD GIN team