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The goal of the project is to enable people to have a better understanding of the world around them. To do this two people, let's call them modern day explorers, will set out on a journey around the world. But, unlike explorers in days of old, these people will be able, via their unique interactive web site, to share, almost immediately, their discoveries with the rest of the world.
Over a period of years our explorers will spend time living among communities and civilisations in every country in the world and, by doing so, try to understand how these people live, the culture that is a part of their lives and the influences either natural or man-made which have contributed to, or stemmed from, that way of life. Every week our team will update their web site with text and pictures.
In achieving the stated goal, we would like to inspire people to find out more. An important element of the project, and one that may create a social change, is that learning can be fun and also, that with modern technology, the learner, through interactivity, can be part of their own learning process. Learning is not the same as, and must be kept separate from, being taught, even if a teacher is involved as a guide or facilitator.
Learning is about asking why and having the chance to find the answers. The Project will provide some of these answers but also pose tantalising questions for the audience to follow up.
The project will raise the awareness, particularly among young people, of the lifestyles, habits, environment and culture of people around the world. It will begin to create links, which will then allow the followers of the site to communicate with others world-wide. It will investigate the lives, education, work, fears and hopes of ordinary people in all countries, allowing them to contribute to the findings. Maybe, along the way, it can correct the somewhat xenophobic and racist opinions which many may gather from their popular press and other sources.
A further innovative element is that the providers of the project are themselves learners. They are the persona of the other learners, being there and finding out. In doing this we are actually giving our resource a personality which books can never really achieve. As the internet becomes more widely available, so our material is there for poorer pupils who maybe cannot afford books. The possible global audience makes the project amazingly cost effective for sponsors.
Another social change is that with internet usage in the home, the learning material, as with our travellers, can cross several generations. Furthermore a large part of the site will be created by young people across the world, who will carry out certain themes within the site, with the lead taken by schools in New Zealand. These young people will contribute to the picture of everyday life around the world and, at the same time, forge personal links, which may be carried through into adult life. And these young people will, in some cases, become the leaders of tomorrow's world.
These themes can be done by anyone, anywhere and are repeatable in future years. In fact, repeated with a different group several years hence they will show not only social and structural changes but also changes in attitude.
We believe that cultural understanding brings about a greater acceptance of different life styles. Our world, and it's the only one we've got, has fragmented over the years into hundreds, indeed thousands, of different cultures. In some cases, on isolated Pacific islands for example, people live as they always did with little or no outside intrusion. But in more populated areas cultures have been thrown together and often in a state of complete disharmony. Here the differences are accentuated and, more often than not, cause friction among the peoples. But how can you understand these cultures? The simple answer is to discover them. But how can you discover something that already exists, has already been seen? There is a quote, attributed to the chemist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi that says, "Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought". Why can this also not apply to people and places?
As Professor Felipe Fernandez-Armesto says in his book, Civilisations, "All history, I have come to believe, is the history of colonisation, because all of us got to where we are from somewhere else". All these cultures will have evolved over thousands of years and, till now, you have been able to examine how they have arrived where they are (history) and see how their environment has contributed to their way of life (geography). Now you can begin to understand this way of life, this culture, by joining us and living among and talking with the people; questioning and experiencing, two fundamental ways in which we all learn.
ONE WORLD, without the need for the unacceptable aspects of globalisation, is now a real possibility and this project will bring the lives of ordinary people closer together, provide a greater understanding of our world and explore how we got to where we are.
