Posted by Idzie:

Hello!

I’ve been thinking for a while that it would be great to have a freedom based education conference here in Montreal, but now I’ve finally gone past just the thinking about stage and onto the actually doing something about it stage!

In case you’ve yet to meet me, I feel like I should start with a brief introduction: my name is Idzie, and I’m a 19 year old lifelong unschooler.  I organize the local support group Unschooling Montreal, and I co-organized the Summer Montreal Unschoolers Gathering, a 5 day event for unschoolers that happened last month.  I’m passionate and fascinated by freedom based education (basically, unschooling, freeschooling, and any other non-coercive way of learning), and have been writing about it for years, have recently started speaking about it as well, and am enthusiastically networking with others who hold similar ideals in education and learning.

Here’s the deal: I’d love to organize, with the core assistance of one or two other people willing to commit to being majorly involved in making it happen, a two day freedom based education conference, which would happen in April or May 2011 (yes, I’m leaving scarily little time for planning).  I’ve been brainstorming with a couple different people about different aspects of the event, so have a basic idea of what I’d like the conference to look like, yet there’s tons of room left for throwing out ideas, finding new ones, and really making this into a great event.

As previously mentioned, I’m looking for a couple of people willing to co-organize this event, but I’m also looking for people willing to help on an as-needed basis, willing to do specific jobs or provide specific equipment and/or assistance, as well as a bunch of volunteers to help during the actual event.  If you’re interested in helping in any of these capacities, or you simply find this idea intriguing and want to learn more before committing to anything (I figure this will be the case for most people), I think it would be wonderful if we could all meet next Thursday (the 29th) to discuss, brainstorm, get to know each other a bit, and start figuring things out! 

I propose that we meet at 2:00 pm in parc George-Etienne-Cartier (at the end of the park near rue Notre-Dame), right across from Marilyn Rowe’s apartment (for those who’ve been there before) with the possibility of moving into her place if the weather is lousy (she’s kindly offered for the meeting to be held there, since it’s such a wonderfully central location!). 

If you’re coming to the meeting, please RSVP to me at idzieel@hotmail.com!  And if you’re interested in helping or finding out more, but can’t make it to the meeting, please send me an email letting me know, and I’ll put you on a mailing list to keep you up to date and let you know when we’ll be meeting next (probably mid-August). 

Also, I’d love if you could pass this message on to anyone else supportive of freedom based education whom you think might be interested in helping with this event!!  It would be great if we could reach as many people into freedom based education as possible.

Thank you, and I’m really looking forward to meeting people and starting with planning! This is a very exciting project for me. :-)

Peace,

Idzie

idzieel@hotmail.com

514-453-3224 (home)

514-246-3224 (the cell phone I’ll have on Thursday, if you have trouble finding the group!)