Environment Support Group ®

S-3, Rajashree Apartments, 18/57, 1st Main Road, S. R. K. Gardens,

Jayanagar, Bannerghatta Road, Bangalore 560 041. INDIA

Telefax: 91-80-6341977/6531339 Fax: 91-80-6918051 (PP)

Email: esg@bgl.vsnl.net.in Website: http://www.altindia.net/esg/index.htm 

 

Press Invitation

Interaction with International Honors Programme Participants

“Cities in the 21st Century”

(Kind Attn. Education Correspondents)

 

                                                          20th February 2002

 

Dear Sir or Madam:

 

Environment Support Group in association with Arunodaya Poirada of Hospet has over the past month organised a very unique academic programme involving over 36 students and faculty from some of the best universities in the United States.  The learning community has lived in the cities of Chennai and Bangalore for about a month now, including with host families, in appreciating the dynamics of Indian cities as part of the “Cities in the 21st Century” course of the International Honours Programme, offered in collaboration with Bard College, Boston, USA.

 

Now in its fourth year, the International Honors Program on Cities in the 21st Century combines an innovative urban studies academic curriculum with field work involving public agencies, planners, elected officials, public/private partnership arrangements, NGOs and grassroots groups.  In 2002 IHP program participants met in New York City before traveling to Chennai and Bangalore, India; and will now proceed to Cape Town, South Africa; and Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba, Brazil.  The overall goal of the “Cities in the 21st Century” programme is to learn how to “read” a city.  The programme ends in Boston, when students present their findings and recommendations to a panel selected from a number of urban academics, activists, and planners.

 

Exposures as part of the India Programme have included visits to IT majors such as Wipro and SASKEN, interacting with leading educationists, lawyers, academicians and community health workers, studying slums and housing projects, appreciating environmental limits to Chennai’s and Bangalore’s growth, discovering what makes cities work, how policy decisions are made and in whose interest, and how the various aspects of city systems function separately and as an integrated whole. 

 

The students and faculty are keen on sharing their experiences with you in the hope that media coverage for such programmes would popularise similar academic exposures for the benefit of Indian students and faculty.  It is their realisation that the future of good education has to be based on direct experience with issues, and India offers an excellent opportunity for such academic exposures. 

 

To facilitate this interaction, we invite you to a meeting with this unique learning community on Thursday, 21 February 2002, 12.45-1.30 p.m at Ashirwad (Xavier Hall), St. Mark’s Road Cross, Behind Kabab Corner, Bangalore.

 

For more details about the programme please visit IHP’s website — www.ihp.edu .

International Honors Program

 

Thanking you,

 

Yours sincerely,

 

 

Leo F. Saldanha                                                                                             Nagini Prasad

Coordinator                                                                                                     Facilitator

“Cities in the 21st Century” India Programme