Global Citizenship blog

Citizenship Foundation is looking for a political speaker to take part in this year’s Margaret Quass Debate* ‘Can we still be global citizens in a worldwide crisis? Facing the challenges of financial insecurity, global warming and scarce resources together’. The debate will take place on the 10th of December 2009 at London’s Commonwealth Foundation and its aim is to bring young people into dialogue with a panel of experts on global citizenship.

The other members of the panel are:

Paul Hilder - Director of the Avaaz Campaign
Ransford Smith - Deputy Secretary-General of the Commonwealth
Gillian Temple - Head of Oxfam’s Public Engagement Team

The programme of the day is:

3.30pm - Arrival of Guests and speakers
4pm - Welcome and introductions
4.15 - 4.45 -Questions from students and debate panel and public
5.15 - Close of debate followed by informal reception
6.30pm -Close of event

The venue is:

Commonwealth Foundation
Marlborough House
Pall Mall
London
SW1Y 5HY

*The Margaret Quass debate is established as an annual event run by Citizenship Foundation in recognition of the work and heritage of Council for Education in World Citizenship (CEWC) which became part of Citizenship Foundation in 2008. Margaret Quass used to be the director of CEWC. CEWC has had a momentous history in informing young people about the purpose and nature of the UN. At its height the UK government funded CEWC, and education ministers from all political parties were supportive. CEWC and its members have helped the birth of many important organisations including Oxfam, Freedom from Hunger, Voluntary Service Overseas, Community Service Volunteers and the Association for Citizenship Teaching.

Citizenship Foundation will start the work on a new project this month. This is the first project that is funded by DFID at the Citizenship Foundation and it is run in partnership with Relief International UK.

Act Global aims to develop young peoples’ understanding of the connections between actions in their communities and the causes of global poverty, and it empowers them to take action on these causes at the local level.

The programme will involve 1,800 youth (600 per year) from Greater London in online discussions on the links between global poverty and actions within their community. These discussions will be moderated by experts from relevant fields and will utilise interactive media. 150 participants (50 per year) will be recruited as Global Youth Activists and attend a residential leadership training in which they work in groups to plan a project that addresses the causes of global poverty from within their communities.

 Watch this space for more updates!

Citizenship Foundation has been informed on Friday, 14 August that the European Commission accepted to fund a large scale development education project we are a partner in. The other organisations involved are: Plan UK (lead partner), Partners Bulgaria, Plan Netherlands and other three Plan offices in Africa: Senegal, Kenya and Malawi.

The project will focus on raising awareness on climate change issues by linking schools in all the countries invovled via a website platform. The students will learn from a series of resources on climate change, developed by Plan UK and updated by the Citizenship Foundation and will also receive training on running active citizenship campaigns (based on Citizenship Foundation’s Youth Act model) in their countries. The proejct is to start in January 2010 and will run for three years. Citizenship Foundation will employ a project officer to work on recruiting schools in the UK and supporting the teachers throughout the project.

These are exciting times for the development of international work at Citizenship Foundation! Watch this space for more updates!

On Wednesday, the 26th of November 2008, we organised a cocktail reception celebrating the merger between the Citizenship Foundation and CEWC. Both friends and staff of Citizenship Foundation and friends of CEWC attended this event which had an ‘atmosphere of celebration and excitement about future collaboration’.

This was a fantastic opportunity for those involved in both Citizenship Foundation and CEWC to come together and learn more about each other and create links for the future. We hope that all those who attended had a good time and we look forward to the development of our international work.

The event was very generously hosted by the Commonwealth Foundation in Central London.

From September to November 2008 Citizenship Foundation hosted an international  project called ‘Young Ideas for Europe’. The project, funded by Robert Bosch Stiftung and supported by NEF (Network of European Foundations) aimed to create a space for young people from different countries to meet and discuss about political topics in a European context.

Therefore, 12 students from Skinners’ Company’s School for Girls in Hackney participated in this project where they explored Family-Friendly Policies in the EU, during a series of workshops in their school. Three schools in Germany took part in the project at the same time. 

November 14th 2008 was the last day of a series of workshops where students from Skinners’ participated in a role game where they played the roles of different political parties and they each presented their manifesto for Family-Friendly policies in 2020. The day ended with everybody present voting on their preferred manifesto. The students were able to exchange the results with their German peers on the day. 

The feedback from the students was very positive and we hope that the Citizenship Foundation will be able to be part of such initiatives in the future as well. 

A big thank you goes to Angeline David and Rebecca Warren from Skinners’ Company’s School for Girls for taking the students through the workshops on Family-Friendly policies.