Charles Kouns's Page

Two and a half years ago, I was sitting in my living room reading a book, when I was swept up into a vision (I don't know any other way to describe it). I was taken to a place where I could hear the prayers of young people around the world. These prayers were very specific - they were asking for a learning experience (aka schools) very different from the one they have today - one that let them find their own voice rather than being filled with the voices of others.

When I came out of the vision, I felt that I had been asked to help create a brand new educational journey for young people (particularly teens) all over the world. So over the past two years, I have started a process of Listening to young people all over the world as to what they would create if their prayers could be answered. The organization is called Imagine Learning and the Listening Sessions are the first phase of our process. Our final step will be to create a brand new educational framework that can be adopted by communities all over the world - one that is centered around young people and truly holds them sacred.

The Listening Sessions bring 8 young people together at a time to co-create in groups of four, their vision of the new learning experience for young people. We let them dream into this - detaching from what they know, what they have been told and what is predictable - and ask them to truly Listen within to what their inner most voice is asking for. Once this process is over, we let them paint this vision on 4 1/2 X 6 foot sheets of paper. Each painting tells a complete story of what they would create. The results look like this:

We are now embarking on a new phase to do these all over the world. We intend to do Listening Sessions in at least 50 countries in order to create a global voice of young people. We need all the help we can get to do this, so if you are interested, feel called as I am to change education across the world - on behalf of young people - please let me know!

You can see more about us at http://www.imaginelearninghs.blogspot.com and at vimeo: http://vimeo.com/4070227.

This is a co-creative project. We need funding, places to do Listening Sessions, people to host us, and about everything else you can imagine.

Final thing. The response of young people to our process has been fantastic. They deeply appreciate being listened to and are really enthusiastic that we might create a brand new learning experience for young people around the world.

Come play!