ABSTRACT
Whilst working with Echeri did enable values and indicators to be selected and modified effectively for their own situation, the most important aspect of this project turned out to be a much deeper learning – in fact it reshaped some core research questions. Echeri Consultores is a non-profit civil society organization based in Michoacan, Mexico, affiliated with one of the original European Union (EU) project partners, the Earth Initiative. They focus on using values education, based on the Earth Charter, to help children and youth reconnect with their locality, particularly around environment reforestation and ecological awareness. The existing prototype toolkit and its underlying development approach needed to be open-ended and open-minded enough to enable local modification; in fact, it should be designed to facilitate local interpretations and localizations. The civil society organization (CSO) practitioners had no previous conception of mixed methods approaches, but adopted them easily. The use of our values-based approach caused substantive transformational learning within this CSO.
