Speakers and Organizations
We are delighted to announce the participation of external speakers and like-minded organizations to enrich participants' professional development experience. Please check back as we will continue to confirm speakers and organizations in the next few months.Speakers
Week One
Keynote Speaker:
Kayhan Karli
Week one Speakers:
Susan J. Ellis
Tatsushi Arai
Week Two
Keynote Speaker:
Geert Hofstede
Week Two Speakers:
Patrick Scheuerer
Florian Ohly
Organizations
Speakers
Keynote Speaker Week One: Kayhan Karli
We joyfully present you Kayhan Karlı as our week one Keynote Speaker to kick off the first AFS Academy.
Karlı has been working as a teacher, educator and education director for more than twenty years. Karlı gave numerous speeches and organized educational seminars on leadership and developing educational leaders through different methods all over Turkey. He is a strong advocate of the view that all adults working in education need to update their skills and knowledge continuously in response to new research and emerging knowledge about learning and teaching.
Since March of 2011, Karlı has been explaining the impact of digital technologies, Globalization and results of most recent Brain and Learning related researches on education and schools to over 15.000 educators through his conference series named ‘’ School of the 21th Century and Learning’’.
Curently, Karlı is the director of Öğretmen Akademisi Vakfı (Teachers Academy Foundation), which was established through the support of Garanti Bank to provide personal and career development training programs for educators. Karlı has an extensive experienced in designing and delivering career development programs for educators, some examples of his work includes: Effective Communication Techniques, Learning Companionship, Difference in Educaiton, Improving Schools Through Peer to Peer Collaboration, Preparing Schools for International Accreditation, Assessing to Learn, Learning focused classrooms, Creating learning centered school cultures, Basic coaching skills for educators, Skills for the 21st Century, Leadership training for educators.
You can read more about him and his advocady for continuous learning here: Turkish Philanthropy bio.
Week One Speakers
Susan J. Ellis
We are excited that Susan will be training with Lucas during the three day course "Organizational Develoment: the 21st Century Volunteer." She will also give an evening talk and be avaiable for country specific or topic specific volunteer development advice.
Susan Ellis is President of Energize, Inc., an international training, consulting, and publishing firm that specializes in volunteerism. She founded the Philadelphia-based company in 1977 and since that time has assisted clients throughout North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, Israel and Australasia to create or strengthen their volunteer corps.
Susan is the author or co-author of twelve books, more than 120 articles on volunteer management for dozens of publications, has posted a provocative “Hot Topic” essay on the Energize Web site monthly since 1997, and writes the national bi-monthly column, “On Volunteers,” for The NonProfit Times (since 1990).
Energize’s comprehensive Web site has won international recognition as a premier resource for leaders of volunteers: www.energizeinc.com. In 2000, she and Steve McCurley launched the field's first online journal, e-Volunteerism: The Electronic Journal of the Volunteer Community (www.e-volunteerism.com), for which she continues to serve as editor-in-chief. Energize also offers Everyone Ready®, online volunteer management training for organizations and individuals (www.everyoneready.info), for which Susan serves as the dean of faculty.
Tatsushi Arai
We are fortunate to have Tatsushi (Tats) Arai with us for a one day ICL course on September 19 on "Transforming Conflict across Cultures: Civil Society Initiatives for Peace" and also as an evening speaker that same day.
Tats received his PhD in conflict analysis and resolution from George Mason University. As a trainer, mediator, and dialogue facilitator, Tats has led a number of peace building workshops for government personnel, members of international organizations, and civil society leaders from around the world, especially the Middle East, the African Great Lakes, East and South Asia, and North America. His most recent activities include field research in Pakistan and public speaking and dialogues aimed at transforming the underlying discourse of the war on terror in the West, as well as the growing networks of organized militancy in the Afghan-Pakistan context. Tats also serves as a dialogue facilitator of Strait Talk, a series of semi-annual conflict resolution dialogues aimed at fostering a new generation of peace builders from Taiwan, Mainland China, and the United States.
Tats’s current research focuses on comparative peacemaking across regional contexts and the trans-generational effects of cultural and structural factors that promote war and peace. His publications include Creativity and Conflict Resolution: Alternative Pathways to Peace (Routledge, 2009), and chapters in Conflict Across Cultures: A Unique Experience of Bridging Differences (Intercultural Press, 2006). To learn more about Tats, visit this SIT site and view a report on a similar workshop.
Keynote Speaker Week Two!
We are honored to present Geert Hofstede as the keynote speaker for week two of the AFS Academy 2012! Saturday, September 22, Hofstede will kick off our week of exploration focusing on Intercultural Learning.
Hofstede is recognized internationally for having developed the first empirical model of “dimensions“ of national culture, thus establishing a new paradigm for taking account of cultural elements in international economics, communication and cooperation. Later, he also developed a model for organizational cultures. Through his manifest academic and cultural activities in many different countries Hofstede can be regarded as one of the leading representatives of intercultural research and studies. The findings of his research and his theoretical ideas are used worldwide in both psychology and management studies.
Through the publication of his scholarly book "Culture's Consequences" (1980, new edition 2001), Geert Hofstede (1928) became the founder of comparative intercultural research. His most popular book "Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind" (1991, new edition 2010, co-authored with Gert Jan Hofstede and Michael Minkov) has so far appeared in about 20 languages. Geert Hofstede's articles have been published in social science and management journals around the world.
Please read more about Hofstede and his work on his website: www.geerthofstede.eu, in our own Intercultural Link Newsletter v.1 i.5 Jun-Aug, pp. 4 & 12, and on our AFS Intercultural programs website, ICL section “Experts Say”.
Week Two Speakers
We are pleased that Patrick will be offering his expertise in the one-day IT course on Sunday, September 23.
Patrick is an independent organizational development consultant and practitioner focusing on strength-based and high engagement approaches to organizational change and development. He helps organizations and teams finding better ways of working together by building on what is already working.
His professional journey brought him from large scale enterprise software development to agile project management and process improvement to organizational development.
His current professional interest lie with strength-based and conversational approaches to change and development
He has worked for clients in the IT, automotive, manufacturing, banking and insurance industry as well as the public sector. You can learn more about Patrick here: www.patrickscheuerer.com.
Florian Ohly
We are happy to present Florian Oly as a trainer in the one-day IT course on Sunday, September 23.Florian is a management consultant and IT manager, helping organizations to define their vision and strategy, improve their processes and IT's contribution to it. In the last 20 years he has worked with companies mostly in logistics, IT, and consulting, as well as NGOs.
He has been a volunteer for AFS for almost thirty years in many roles, on the grassroot and national level, as well as an international volunteer consultant.
Organizations
Isik Schools
Isik Schools will be hosting and participating in the Friday Program, "Society in Motion: Turkish Perspectives on the Relevance of Intercultural Learning."The schools have a rich history of 125 years. The first Feyziye School was founded in 1885 in Thessalonica. The Feyziye Schools Foundation has flourished in its service to secular primary, secondary and higher education in Turkey. One of the most trusted education institutions in Istanbul, it now has two campuses on the European shore of Istanbul, one on the Asian shore; and a university. All three campuses have Kindergarten, Primary and High Schools; while the university has four faculties and two institutes. To learn more about the Isik schools and Foundation, explore the Isik Schools page.
Ashoka Turkey
Ashoka is the world's oldest and largest network of leading social entrepreneurs — men and women who follow entrepreneurial yet not-for-profit approaches to create, implement and scale system-changing ideas & solutions for the world’s most urgent social problems. Since its founding 30 years ago, Ashoka has provided start-up financing, professional support services, and connections to almost 3,000 social entrepreneurs in 70 countries, including widly acknowledged leaders like Muhammad Yunus (Nobel Peace Prize laureate), Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia), Peter Eigen (founder of Transparency International) and many more. // www.ashoka.orgAshoka has been active in Turkey since 2000, electing and supporting 24 leading social innovators in various fields and locations across the country - including Nasuh Mahruki (AKUT), Ibrahim Betil (TOG), Şengül Akçar (KEDV) and many more. www.turkey.ashoka.org
ORAV
Ogretmen Akademisi Vakfi (Teachers’ Academy Foundation-or ORAV) was established in August 2008 with the purpose of serving in every way for the development of teachers in Turkey, enhancing their capacity to raise the next generation, and helping them reach level of recognition and esteem they deserve in the society. ORAV’s mission is to use existing opportunities and resources in the most efficient way to deliver projects that will support teachers’ and educators’ professional and personal development; to make them the leaders in raising the next generations who will guide the future and make teaching receive the value and respect it deserves in the society by showing that this occupation requires special information, talent and attitude.ORAV is the only NGO in Turkey that focuses on the development of teachers and provides unique development opportunities for teachers. Since its foundation, ÖRAV aims to fill the gap between teachers’ developmental needs and the service that they receive and thus working with MEB to deliver its projects on the field, but with a very different approach. ÖRAV’s trainings are interactive; require the contribution and active participation of the teachers, they are fun and they take place in the schools’ classrooms that teachers work at. These trainings are designed in workshop format. With the first project, “No Limits in Teaching”, which started in 2009, the foundation has reached almost 70.000 volunteer K8 level teachers all over Turkey, as of August 2012. The foundation aims to reach one quarter of all K8 level teachers (100.000) in Turkey at the end of five years.