Blogs
June 16, 2020 • 2 min read
GOAL’s Global Youth Programme participants have been reflecting on the activities they are creating as a part of a development education resource for 14 - 18 year olds who are curious about Global Citizenship. Below is a sneak peek of their work, and an invitation for young people across Ireland to help test and give feedback on activities through a series of mini-workshops.
By: Freddie Rika, Niamh Flynn, Declan Keane, Anna Carroll and Niamh Quinn, representing the GOAL Global Youth Team
A Global Citizen’s journey starts with reflecting on your internal world and how that shapes your worldview.
As GOAL Global Youth (GGY) 2020 Programme participants, we are working on creating a resource that will help to guide other young people along a Global Citizenship journey. We have many skills in mind as we develop this resource and we hope that the activities in Part one foster critical thinking that is so important in recognizing the interconnectedness of the self and others.
Our first activity connects our values and our actions. We as change-makers believe that acknowledging our values is a key part of the journey to becoming a global citizen.
Our second activity focuses on our experiences, and how our perspectives shape our story. This requires us to look further outside of ourselves, and understand that even the people closest to us experience the world in a different way. Each person’s personal experience leads to a different understanding of a shared situation. This means we need to listen to each other’s points of view.
Our third activity explores where power lies, what our privileges are and how this affects our change-making journey. We thought about how society both builds us up and boxes us in. We have the ability to break down those barriers that reinforce inequalities so all people have the opportunity to thrive.
These can be some heavy topics to move through and we can relate to the overwhelming feeling that change can seem out of reach. However, being a global citizen has been life-changing for us in many ways. We want your path to becoming a Global Citizen to be fun and engaging and we hope it inspires you to work for positive change in your home community as well as your global one.
So how can you help?
If you are between 14 and 18 years old (or know someone who is), you can sign up to one or all of our mini-workshops taking place between Friday 19 June and Friday 26 June.
The Youth Programme Team will have another round of mini-workshops to test different activities between August 13th and 27th, so stay tuned for another opportunity to take part.
If you have questions or would like more details, please contact GOAL’s Youth Engagement Officer, Aislin at alavin@goal.ie.
