United for Social Transformation (UxST)
‘United for Social Transformation’ is a 2 year project co-founded by the EU that started in June 2021 involving 5 partner organisations from Spain, Lithuania, Portugal and Italy. Throughout the project Development Perspectives have been working with young people (13-30) in Ireland to find out about how COVID-19 has impacted upon them and offer training to enhance their competencies in emotional awareness and self-knowledge, green and sustainable living, active citizenship and creative thinking and entrepreneurship. As with all of our work this will be rooted in transformative education and active global citizenship. So far, the main outputs of the project has been an online training course (OTC) for young people based on this topic and an ebook outlining the impact of Covid-19 on young people in each partner country.
Games 4 The Goals (G4TG)
Games 4 the Goals was a 7-day training course aimed at youth workers, teachers and educators that wanted to explore gamification principles and how they could be applied to Global Citizenship Education and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 20 participants took part from 7 EU states. Experiential learning methods combined with theory and practice of gamification were heavily utilised throughout the course. Participants also had a space to develop their own games based on the SDGs and prototype them in a peer-learning format. Some of the activities designed throughout the training course can be found in an ebook that we created.
Adventures in Global Education (AIGE)
Adventures in Global Education was a 1-week training course designed to explore how outdoor education and adventure could be used to explore active citizenship and the pillars of global citizenship education (GCE). Once again, the beautiful setting of Bru Moytura was chosen for our training course. We were delighted to welcome 17 participants from 5 EU countries to share this adventure together. They were navigated through the challenges by our colleague Nick Doran and our freind and long-time collaborator with DP, Luciana Almeida. The course explored literal and metaphorical applications of nature-based and outdoor education with the participants. One of the highlights of the week was a surfing lesson for the groups followed by a beach clean up in Strandhill
Change the Story, Change the World (CSCW)
Change the Story, Change the World was a blended training course (online and in-person) that invited 21 youth workers and other educators across six EU countries to come together online for 3 days and to the beautiful Bru Moytura Co. Sligo for 4 days. The training course explored Global Citizenship Education (GCE) and storytelling. Specifically, we introduced the Theatre of the Oppressed model as a methodology to examine how to change stories and narratives to ones that are more heavily based on the values of GCE. This culminated in a public performance in Sligo Town. The performance was attended by local educators, activists and DP alumni. The engaging nature of TOTO lent itself to a night of active participation, critical thinking and reflection.
