Training: Community engagement in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

In collaboration with the NGO Lecturers Without Borders (founded and run by UP staff) the UP team organised a training workshop on how to involve the community (and in particular, young students) in participatory action towards achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The workshop was aimed mostly at educators (teachers and parents) and gave strategies for engagement in collective projects, from their inception to their completion.

It closed with a series of tips to help young students move from helplessness to action in the face of the global challenges of the 21st century, while emphasising the need for humility and active listening to give them voice and agency.

Overall, the event was an amazing opportunity for parents and teachers to learn how to address a problem that they identify in the children and adolescents they interact with: a feeling of hopelessness and paralysis in the face of climate change, inequalities and global pandemics.

Interestingly, the webinar had initially been planned to be aimed at students directly, but based on the responses we got from them in the roundtables with students from IO1, we decided to extend it also to teachers and educators, as the students consistently said that they felt the need for support from their authority figures (e.g. their teachers) in order to engage in Digital Action. The fact that teachers from different countries joined added a layer of cultural discussions that was very enriching.