EARTH Consortium

I wanted to share this awesome summer opportunity with you that I mentioned in class yesterday.  Penn State recently joined Consortium EARTH and can now offer a unique summer experience at EARTH University in tropical Costa Rica!  

 Learn about sustainable agriculture; the trade-offs between carbon, climate and livelihoods; community outreach, leadership and engagement; and about rural tourism as a development strategy.  The philosophy of EARTH University is “learning by doing”, therefore each course involves lots of hands-on activities such as working in a rainforest reserve, visiting local communities and farmers, and touring local businesses.

There are two one-month sessions, and you can earn 6 credits at each session.  The $4,000 price tag includes the cost of tuition, room and board, and all activities.   This is actually a pretty great deal, considering it includes the cost of tuition AND room and board!  (If you stayed on campus and took 6 credits, the credits alone would be $4,200!)

The deadline for application is March 1.  You can find the application, along with more information on the Consortium EARTH website.

Please let me know if you are interested and I can get you additional information and answer any questions.  This is a fantastic opportunity!

Session #8 Ticket Out Responses

What are you curious about?

1. Should people be educated?

•  We will bring this to class as lingering question.

2. How does the high value of education in Costa Rica affect support for Avancemos program?

• A very good article to read: Conditional Cash Transfers: Reducing Present and Future Poverty
  

3.Journal entry expectation?

• We will bring this to class as lingering question.

4.Cash Transfer Program in the US?

• Opportunity NYC- experimental Conditional Cash Transfer program (CCT) by the Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg. Announced in April 2007, it was the first CCT program to be launched in the United States.

5.Specefic Of CCT program around the world

• The Social Assistance in Developing Countries Database

6.I am writing a research paper for another class about ATVET and AET in developing countries. Can I link this with My DIY project.

• Discuss with your instructors

7. Who Coordinate the report for CCT&UCT programs?

• The government or organization who organize the program will repot it to the organization who funded the program.

8.Why in some situation women give the money over men?

• Refer reading #5 and #7

9.How do we look at each community and determine what is ''appropriate" education for them specifically?

•  Great question to ask to our guest speaker -Theme: Type of Agriculture Education

10.The debate between CCT&UTC and more example of each program

• Conditional versus Unconditional Cash : a commentary
  

What did you learn?

1. We make a lot of assumptions about what we need to do for other people/countries even if they don't always agree
2. Deferent methods of CCT
3. I learned about CCT and UCT , very interesting
4.Cash Transfer program
5. CCT are one way to help education but not the only way
6. The pros and cons of UCT and CCT
7.A lot about CCT
8.Which countries are in which region of Asia
9.New York temporarily has a CCT program

What do you want to learn more about?

1. The Avancemos program

• Visit this Website

2.Are the benefit of conditional cash transfer worth it.

• The Social Assistance in Developing Countries Database

3. How can we help with cash transfer program

• We will bring this to class as lingering question

4. Effectiveness of CCT

• The Social Assistance in Developing Countries Database

5. Specific Ag education program in developing countries.

• We will have the opportunity to learn more about Ag. education in developing countries in class session #11, session #12, session #13, session # 17, session #18 and session #22.