51° 3/2009: Networks
Across the board of its three competence centres, Stiftung Mercator initiates and funds a variety of networks. Teachers, for example, are often described as lone warriors, but often all they are lacking is the opportunity to share their experiences with colleagues in other schools or to seek the advice of experts from other fields.
This is where our three projects come in – “Schools in a Team”, “Mercator School Club” and “Head Teacher Training by Senior Experts in NRW” – in a bid to help teachers, head teachers and schools to develop and implement joint projects in networks and to learn from and with one another. These projects are presented in this issue.
In our interview, Roger de Weck talks about cooperation in times of crisis, about the importance of social and professional networks, and about the French and their ‘carnet d’adresses’. We introduce you to Nesrine Jamoud, a young Islamic scholar from Berlin who has become one of the first 23 fellows of the Mercator Fellowship on International Affairs. We also offer an insight into our “Global Young Faculty” initiative, which began this autumn and creates a network of some 100 young academics from the Ruhr Metropolis, allowing them to work together on key research questions in the areas of climate, technology, economics, health, culture and society.
Furthermore, Susanna Krüger, founder of the non-profit consulting platform “good root”, presents factors which determine the success of networks in the area of foundations, and shows why intelligent networking is of crucial importance for a foundation’s sphere of influence.