Climate Change Education Caravan
The details....
We are part of the Glasgow Climate Challenge Fund - from 22nd Nov every donation you make to support our work will be matched by Glasgow City Council!
Please check out our Crowdfunder
for our CCEC & Stories of Glasgow
Can you support us & make an investment towards saving our species?
The CCEC is our response to the Climate Emergency that has been declared worldwide & the Eco-Grief we feel as a result of the myriad of crises our beautiful world faces right now. We know that change happens through empowering local communities to come together and secure their future. We see education as a critical route to this...but not as a stand alone element. Our vision for the CCEC is that the education, awareness, and potential solutions we provide are shared by our school students with their parents and their local community... as a catalyst for taking grassroots action on the elements that matter most to them. Every student, and each communtiy will take something different from the CCEC curriculum, BUT everyone will be inspired and guided to take meaningful grassroots action. And it is this which will deliver the change towards a liveable future for all our world needs right now.
We have chosen Food Security as our theme for a number of reasons. Primarily because empowerment, community spirit & togetherness can be realised and built through a transition to food self-sufficiancy & a connection to our food sources (and away from the food systems that are currently damaging people and planet). This is particularly accute today when SO many people in both the global north and global south are struggling to get access to food - a vital neccessity to survival and basic human right that is being denied to so many. We also chose this theme because food and food security is connected to a vast range of environmental and social justice issues worldwide. It perfectly illustrates the interconnectedness of our physical, emotional, and planetary health and wellbeing. And we seek to re-connect people around the world to where their food comes from, the huge problems created by the current food system, and most importantly WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT.
A major aim of the CCEC is to reimagine how we deliver education, and what is important to teach school students. Essentially we want to show our students the unlimited number of pathways to being part of a JUST TRANSITION upon leaving school. And equip them with the skills to navigate our world as it is today. This comes from our personal experience of leaving an education system which teaches us about the climate crisis and social injustise around the world, but upon leaving school we felt that the limited 'career pathways' we could follow made us a part of the problem, rather than contributing to real, effective solutions. Our CCEC curriculum will teach our students that the world is their oyster, and show them that they have the freedom to follow their hearts in what they do through their life. We empower entrepenuership and finding purpose in the work you do - to enjoy the freedom of working for yourself in a sustainable, respectful way. We seek to REDFINE SUCCESS away from wealth (greed) and a powerful position and instead base success on happiness and what you contribute to the world around you. We also highlight that there is no need to do the same thing day in day out for the rest of your life...instead we equip students to know how to build a just transistion through awareness, compassion and valuing more than just money.
We learn through experience. How many of us can honestly say that sitting in a classroom environment is the optimal way to take in information and learn? Education is meant to prepare us for our future...we believe that there are better ways to do this than what our current education systems provide. Ways in which education and learning become fun once more, ways which reduce (perhaps remove) the horrendous workload teachers are under & values teachers for the amazing work they do! Ways which engage and inspire students to remain curious and continue learning for life. Ways that equip students to learn for themselves rather than memorise the selected facts that curriculums teach today. Ways that value students for their unique skillsets and contributions to the world around them - not stress students with exams and tests. And critically for governments worldwide ways to educate that have a better return on investment than current education systems.
We vision a world where, through their learning, school students are actually included in, and contribute towards planning for the future - within their local communities and at national government level. Utopian Stories is a citizen-science based project with an aim to co-create our shared visions for our alternative, sustainable futures. By bringing Utopian Stories to the students we work with we will be sharing and developing their essential skills in Futures Literacy and empowering them to work with us towards building a society and future with bottom-up (rather then top-down) policy making and implementation. A collaborative governance model which they will help build.
The Climate Emergency, and the numerous other crises our world currently faces is enough to show us we need change! We know that the first step is to CHANGE THE NARRATIVE. We are currently writing the final chapter in the history of human life on Earth... but we can quite easily change the story that is being written. We can choose to come together and act in time to Save Our Species. What if... as we write the next chapters of the story of human life on Earth we realigned our values, redefined what we mean by success, growth, value??? Take this example - the Caravan in our CCEC is not a material caravan in the way the word evokes many to think. Instead, our Caravan takes the word back to its roots, its origin...as a journey we take together. And we are inviting everyone to join us on this journey. Just imagine what can be achieved. This is the power and potential of the CCEC - the togetherness and collaboration on our journey into the future.
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Each of our educational elements will be created together with our delivery partners - organisations or individuals who we identify as leading the way within their industry/sector in terms of what they deliver & their high ethical and environmental standards. As such all our resources will be created by experts and practitioners in the subject area and will give students a taste of what to expect from working within that industry. We really want to create the connections between what is taught at school and the JUST TRANSITION students will enter (and lead) as they leave school - be that through entrepreneurship or employment inspired by what they gain from the CCEC. Therefore in addition to the lesson plan aspect of the educational element we will produce with each of our delivery partners - they will also offer a means to enable further experience for those students who are inspired by the subject/industry and a pathway to build their future in that sector. All our educational elements will be packaged as a teacher friendly resource complete with lesson plans and a summary of the national curriculum which is covered, the related SDG's and links for further information on the topic. We are currently working with teachers to find out exactly what they want from these resources, and the best way to structure and deliver them.
In addition to the CCEC curriculum which will be delivered over the space of a year - from COP27 (Nov 2022) to COP28 (Nov 2023) - we will; work with each of our schools to plant, grow, & take guardianship of 100 trees, work with our schools and their community to establish an organic vegetable garden (perhaps the beginnings of a community market garden?), and help each school develop a TfB tree nursery. These activities are designed to connect our students and their local communities to the land which provides all we need to survive, and nurture respect for our natural world. This and so much more is to look forward to as we deliver this world-changing project - are you ready to join us on the journey?
Are you ready to join us on this journey? For this first year of the CCEC we will be working directly with our 22 school partnerships - each of our schools across Tanzania is partnered with one of our schools in Scotland. However, we hope to share the journey & resources to others who would like to join in the journey. At this stage we need your help to share our project, our vision, and help us get the audience and funding required to deliver the world-changing potential of this project.
