LEADlab for Sustainable Futures, an AUN Summer Camp to form leaders who will shape the future

Last 16-28 June, Ateneo de Manila University hosted its second AUN Summer Camp at its Loyola Heights campus in Quezon City. While 2024’s camp focused on ‘walking the talk’ of the Sustainable Development Goals, this year’s Ateneo camp revolved around Leadership for Sustainable Futures.

This year’s camp sought to prepare the participants to view and understand the world as a complex and interconnected system, read the signals of change, and to use these skills to imagine scenarios of sustainable futures. The Gokongwei Brothers School of Education and Learning Design (GBSEALD), through the Lily Gokongwei Ngochua Leadership Academy (The Lily)  and the Ateneo Research Institute for the Futures of Education (RIFE), led the design of an innovative and pioneering leadership experience for the young ASEAN campers: a workshop laboratory for Leading, Engaging and Advocating with Depth for a more sustainable future. Through various workshops, lectures, group activities, discussions, and passion project-making, Dr. Assunta Cuyegkeng of The Lily, Ms. Marite Irvine of RIFE, and their respective teams introduced students to the concepts of systems thinking, futures thinking, and leading with depth; encouraged them to try their best in exercising these concepts; and ultimately helped the campers build their proficiency in these essential leadership competences.

Taking off from a campus-wide Sustainability Tour, Ms. Abigail Favis (faculty member of the Department of Environmental Science and former Program Manager of the Ateneo Institute for Sustainability) introduced the participants to “The Planet’s Operating Manual,” engaging the campers in difficult, real life questions related to sustainability. This progressed into an illustrative activity on connectedness, with a discussion underlining the need for empathetic ecology, that is, mindful and empathetic listening to nature and to others.

The next few days focused on Futures Thinking–imagining and exploring different possibilities for what the future might look like, preparing for change by asking: ‘What could happen in the future, and how can we better prepare and shape its outcomes?’  More specifically, the participants were challenged to engage in ‘Discerning Foresight,’ a Futures Thinking strategy developed by GBSEALD that also leans heavily on Ignatian Discernment.  

Having come to realize how wide and open the future might be, campers were asked to demonstrate through a guided ‘Futures Bazaar’ activity how their “superpowers” might serve to shape that future: that with “superpower” anticipation comes resilience, with “superpower” imagination comes possibilities; with the “superpower” long-term view comes sustainability.
 

Fr Johnny Go SJ, Dean of GBSEALD, then spent some time with the campers to help them become more aware of how complexity and uncertainty are closely intertwined with creativity and opportunity.

Fr Johnny challenged the campers to move from ‘fundamentalist’ or ‘relativist’ thinking toward an ‘evaluatist’ approach–one that requires an analytic openness to the combined weight of evidence, authority, and argument. Contrasting the two extremes of “certainty at the expense of complexity” (the fundamentalist approach), and “openness at the expense of reasoning” (the relativist approach), Fr. Johnny emphasized that leading must occur with critical thinking, and critical thinking is only possible with an evaluativist mindset.

The campers then got to reflect on their own leadership, as well to make sense of how they could help shape their preferred sustainable future, with the help of tools for listening, reflection, and discernment. 

LEADlab culminated in a final project for campers, who were all asked to prepare ‘Provocations for a Sustainable Future,’  i.e. asking provocative questions about issues that campers care deeply about, and then describing their vision for a preferred future, strategies in pursuit of that preferred future, and ultimately articulating their very own Sustainability Leadership Philosophy. Using art and creativity as their main tools of expression, the campers were asked to create flipcards that were then exhibited and proudly presented during the closing ceremony.

During the closing ceremony, main LEADlab Facilitator Dr. Cuyegkeng said, “Now, it is up to you to inspire purpose and passion among others in your community, so that they, too, might help shape a better future, not only for ASEAN, but for the world.”

To view the Ateneo Campers’ final projects, visit the links below. Examine each group's flipcards by clicking on their individual titles: Complex and Broken Systems, Ecological Conversion, Reconciling with Creation, and Seeking New Paths.

• Group 1: Number One One One
• Group 2: The Seeds
• Group 3: Biodegradables
• Group 4: Sampaguita
• Group 5: High 5
• Group 6: The Last Straw

To see more photos of LEADlab for Sustainable Futures and stay up to date with Ateneo Global’s initiatives and international programs, follow us on Instagram @ateneo_global and on Facebook at Ateneo Global.