Abigail Falik
Education - United States of America (North America)
Case Study: Peer to Peer Global Citizenship Education
Abby is working with her organisation NetAid (www.netaid.org), to develop the Global Citizen Corps (GCC)— a youth leadership program designed to equip secondary school students in the U.S. with the training and resources they need to be effective peer educators around issues of global poverty and development. The model grows from two basic assumptions:
• there is no shortage of young Americans who innately understand the value of teaching and learning about global poverty and development, and
• globally-minded young people have the potential to be highly effective messengers of development education among their peers.
Each year, NetAid recruit a diverse group of ‘GCC Leaders’ through outreach to mass media, networks of educators, associations of schools, and youth-serving organizations. Successful candidates demonstrate leadership ability, entrepreneurial flair, significant interest in global issues, and a commitment to inspire others to action. While the GCC model is, at it’s core, student run, to ensure that students are able to work effectively at their schools, each student must secure the support of a faculty advisor who agrees to support his/her effort serving as a liaison between the student and the school’s administration.
Once selected, GCC Leaders compile baseline measures for their year of service by completing an online self-assessment and a peer and teacher survey at their school. With these baseline measures in place, GCC Leaders embark on a year-long program designed to deepen their own understanding of global poverty and development, and to strengthen their ability to engage their peers in learning, exchange, reflection and action around a variety of themes.
To prepare for their year of service, all GCC Leaders participate in an intensive training program, either through a series of online eTraining modules or an in-person training summit. Through a curriculum which draws on experiential and service-learning pedagogy, participants are challenged to think critically about the US role in the world while beginning to develop a more global perspective characterized by a sense of individual responsibility to the global community, a commitment to social justice and a belief that individuals have the power and responsibility to make a difference in the fight against global poverty. Specific thematic focuses include units addressing hunger, poverty, HIV/AIDS, development assistance, debt and trade policy, and access to education.
To complement this substantive learning, a series of skills-building workshops, emphasizing leadership, message framing, working with the media, networking and resource mobilization, help GCC Leaders develop effective peer education and campaigning skills. At the conclusion of the training, GCC Leaders receive a Global Citizenship Toolkit which equips them with key resources (eg. banners, videos, games and activities, and a CD-rom with downloadable posters, fact-sheets, teacher lesson plans and slide-shows) to help promote global citizenship in their high schools and communities.
