guess who's coming to dinner

To Scalford Hall, Melton Mowbray, this evening for dinner and networking at a residential conference for the East Midlands Network for Global Perspectives in Schools (EMNGPS). Delegates are attending from a variety of organisations across the East Midlands (and some from further afield) working to promote global citizenship in various forms with schools, teachers and pupils. Organisations represented at this event include:

• Brocks Hill Primary School
• CfBT Education Trust
• Coaching for Hope
• Derbyshire County Council
• East Midlands Network for Global Perspectives in Schools
• Education for Sustainable Development Schools Working Group
• Global Education Derby
• Global Education LeicesterShire
• The Discovery Centre
• Leicester Botanical Gardens
• Leicester Masaya Link Group
• Leicestershire County Council
• Lifeworlds Learning
• MUNDI
• NASUWT
• Northamptonshire County Council
• Nottingham City
• Skillshare International
• Studentforce for Sustainability
• University of Leicester

Despite the fact that EMNGPS has performed very well (indeed, the East Midlands has arguably been the most successful of all English regions in promoting the global dimension in schools), the Department for International Development has pulled funding from its national network halfway through a ten-year funding stream. Another tranche of funding has become available, but it's not in a form that could allow the work to continue in its present form. Many of the people and groups here at this event have banded together to put in a collective bid for new funding - we eagerly await the outcome of that bid.

Many of the people here are leading figures in fields of primary, secondary, further and higher education across the East Midlands - and they are the type of people who are minded to favour issues of equality, diversity and human rights. So this is a fruitful environment for me to promote the work of the Regional Equality and Diversity Partnership (REDP), especially as it relates to young people - an area for which I currently have special responsibility. Although EMNGPS itself is living on borrowed time, these individuals and (most of) the institutions they represent won't disappear and could be drawn on in a variety of ways to support REDP's mission.

Dinner was very nice; almost everyone took their desserts into the TV lounge to watch the third and final election debate. I was having none of that though and didn't get up from the table. But I couldn't resist peeping at Twitter every so often to see some of the wry, amusing or despairing postings about the debate there.

Find out more about the East Midlands Network for Global Perspectives in Schools:
http://www.emngps.org.uk/

Find out more about Scalford Hall Management Training Centre and Hotel:
http://www.scalfordhall.co.uk/