“Somewhere in the last century there began to appear indications that we are not what we had been brought to think we were and that the ‘world’ was not what we had been brought to think that it is.

The science upon which stood out technology and civilization and which we had been taught to believe to be infallible much like the venerable leaders of the worlds religions, was found to be as relative as our every observation.

Our ‘development’ plans showed themselves to be utterly ridiculous and doomed to lead us into extinction and our technologically based social processes of production threatened to poison us.

Most up us went into instant denial, pretending that nothing was amiss and that the future would be the same as the past we could remember even as we saw and felt the changes in our world…

This was when they began to appear…”



They come from various academic disciplines, schools of training and types of practice, and they are uniquely trained to respond to the critical situation that the human species has unwittingly brought upon itself. Balanced in gender, they range from young people who have just completed their first degrees, to middle aged professionals and mature men and women each of them selected for their own peculiar conceptual frameworks, perceptual paradigms, skill sets and track record and they are equipped to perceive and conceptualize the way through the difficult times that lie ahead and to respond to the critical climate events and economic situations that may arise.

They are trained to conceptualize developmental processes that are sustainable and to link up with each other all over earth to form a network that can guide the human species through the task of generating a new and sustainable civilization.


Who They Are:

They are the Masters of Developmental Practice who form the nodes of a Global Network spreading across the face of Earth, that can function as the strategic guidance system of the human species and guide us in our responses to the challenges that lie not far ahead.

Why They Are Here:

The human species is faced with a critical situation within which Rapid Resource Depletion (RRD), Pollution and Global Climate Change (P&GCC), Global Monetary Collapse (GMC), and the Growth Model of Development (GMD) have brought the global civilization that we have generated over the past century to the verge of collapse. Today we struggle to perceive a way out of this situation that threatens our human species and indeed life as we know it on Earth, with extinction. Our governments and our leaders and the heads of our social institutions, even our religions are unable to guide us because they do not know what can be done.

Where They Come From:
Amidst this situation of growing chaos there have begun to emerge all over Earth, people of wisdom who realize what can be done and who are able and willing to do what they can do. They have realized that we need a global network of men and women who are equipped, able and willing to link up together in order to perceive what none of us can on our own perceive so that they are able to perceive pathways to a new and Sustainable Civilization as well as processes that can lead us there and by which the damage that has been done to Earth can be repaired.

What They Are Doing:
Their task is to generate a Civilization based on the clearly articulated objective of the facilitation of life’s evolution through and beyond human being and its universal spread and where processes of production are based on the dynamics of our natural environment where the raw materials of one product are the by products of another and hence there is no waste to be disposed of and where the goal of life is an ever increasing perceptual skill that enables us to perceive pathways to possible futures and not growth and consumption for their own sake and the mere extension of life and avoidance of death.

Who Supports Their Training:
Their training is structured by a small network of around twenty persons who are experts in the field of education for sustainable development. This small network has initiated a process of education aimed at producing men and women with the perceptual capacity and conceptual skills required to link up and form a global network that can function as a strategic guidance system for the human species that may guide us into a new and sustainable civilization that will give us new ways to live, new lives for each one of us and a new world for us all.

How This Is Done:
It is doing this through the inception and sustenance of a global Training Program that has already commenced in 20 universities in 16 countries in 6 continents around the world. Each participating university began by recruiting cohorts of twenty to thirty persons for training.

How They Are Selected:
Selected through a rigorous process of interviews and examinations, all applicants are examined in order to evaluate the depth and scope of their conceptual frameworks and their ability to articulate themselves and work in the English language. As in the case of airline pilots, English will be the language in which the global Masters will work as they link up across earth.

Cohorts may include employees of development non-governmental organizations, donor agencies, government ministries and the private sector as well as development entrepreneurs, strategists, systems designers, process engineers, story tellers, myth makers and organization developers. Their academic background and work experience may span a range of fields including advertising, agriculture, development communication, economics, education, engineering, food science and nutrition, law, media, psychology and sociology.


How they are trained:
Training is conducted within academic institutions with global recognition and an adequate operational history. They are trained by the very best teachers who over their careers have approached the frontiers of human thought in their areas of expertise and all of whom are holders of doctorates in their respective fields. Some of them are Nobel prize winners in their areas of expertise.

Their essential skills include the ability to relate to their trainees without the authoritarianism and ‘know-it-all-ness’ and ‘don’t ask me any questions or I will bite your head off’ or ‘if you cannot understand what I teach then come for tuition’ type of strategies that have become pillars of the pedagogical process in Sri Lanka. Trainees are encouraged to make every effort to engage their trainers and take from them whatever knowledge and skills they think they would benefit from.

Their conceptual training will include meta level examination of the conceptual frameworks underlying various approaches.

This will essentially be done through dialogues with their teachers and through thought experiments that illustrate the dynamics and the conceptual frameworks underlying the following academic and experimental fields of study:

Agriculture, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Zoology, Economics, Mathematics, Statistics, Energy, Sociology, Engineering, Education, Community Medicine, Environment, Geography, Geology and Climate Dynamics.

They will also familiarize themselves with the following practical applications required for the guidance of the developmental process:

Information Systems, Statistics and Data Analysis, Professional Writing and Communication Skills, Research Methodology, Budget Planning, Financial Management and Commodities Management, Economic Policy Analysis, Micro Economics of Development and Policy Analysis, Economic and Financial Evaluation of Projects under certainty and uncertainty, Planning Urban and Rural Infrastructure


They will also study the following processes, systems and dynamics:

Community Development and Social Dynamics, Integrated approaches to Sustainable Development, Human Impact on the Natural Environment, Gender and Human Rights, Principles of Leadership, , Sustainable Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Disaster Management, Environmental Economics, Climate Change in South Asia, Integrated Coastal Zone Management and Marine Affairs, Environmental Impact Assessment, Contemporary Issues in the Regional and Global Economy, Public Economic Policy in Sri Lanka, Energy Economics and Health Economics.

Internship:
Each student will also complete a field study Internship of three months and present their findings, conclusions and recommendations towards the rendering of the global developmental process sustainable based on their learning in the field.

Country Specialization:
In the course of their training each individual will also focus on one particular developing country, familiarizing themselves with its particular situation, its developmental indicators, its cultural context, its human resources and its social institutions so that they become country experts who can at any moment be called up to address critical situations in the country of their specialization.

Operational Culture:
A cohort is what the basic tactical unit of the ancient roman military was known and the various cohorts of Masters in Development Practice will be on constant alert and may at any time be called upon by the people of the world to come to their assistance in order to join them in responding to critical situations and challenges that they may have to face.

In time as their influence and the recognition of the role that they are uniquely equipped to play grows, it is quite likely that the global Masters of Development Practice may request and receive global passports that will enable them to respond to critical situations without having to go through usual processes of meeting entry requirements and going through immigration procedures so that they can travel directly to critical sites across boarders avoiding commercial entry points.

Under usual circumstances they will be securely nested within the internet and will project their presence online on a continuous basis so that they can be accessed from anywhere on the face of Earth at anytime of night or day.

Strategic Links
They will connect with Masters of Development Practice around the world, with regional and research centers, with the United Nations Organization and its various specialized bodies, with multi lateral institutions, with civil society organizations and governments, with donor agencies and NGOs, with the corporate sector and professional organizations and with disaster management networks, to educate people on the changes that have to be made in individual lifestyles, in habitat and social institutional frameworks and their internal processes, in conceptual frameworks and policy, in engineering, technology, materials and manufacturing systems, configurations and processes, in primary formative processes that determine the human experience and in mythologies, ideologies and developmental praxis to facilitate the movement towards sustainability.

Network Generation Process:
As training at conceptual level proceeds the trainees will be engaged through various processes that facilitate the emergence of the Global Network of Masters of Development Practice (MDP’s). They will be exposed to the high levels of mental and psychological accessibility, resourcefulness and responsibility required to function as active nodes of a network and will be expected to develop the ability to sharply define their boundaries while simultaneously maintaining levels of flexibility required in order to render themselves accessible to people they do not know but who require access to their skills and knowledge. They will also require conceptual and perceptual skills required in order to access and operate within areas and conditions hitherto unknown.