Connecting global issues and local experience

Education is central to all of our work.  We employ a model of education derived largely from the work of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, in which there is no strict division between teachers and learners and in which knowledge is seen as something actively created rather than as a fixed ‘stock’ dispensed by experts to passive recipients.

Education in this sense is something more than acquiring facts.  It develops people’s potential for creativity and provides the means for the disadvantaged and marginalised to actively work for change in their communities.  It does not provide ready-made answers but poses problems which people confront by working together.  Consequently, people’s own experience provides the raw materials for educational programmes.  We aim to affirm people’s experiences, enabling people to see that as they work, discuss, co-operate and learn, they are engaging in and creating culture.

This realization is the starting point for a our Global Education programmes which relate people’s knowledge, skills and experience to global themes.  Participants in the programmes begin to draw the relationships between the different levels and aspects of society based upon the concrete knowledge which they hold.  They see the links between, for example, the local, national and international dimensions; or between cultural, political, social, economic and religious questions.  Using the information they have to hand, and sources which are readily accessible, they can develop their knowledge through a genuinely problem-posing approach to education.

Themes are not presented to participants as issues identified at the whim of the organizers.  The common concerns of participants make up the themes of any training programme.  They become global themes when we begin to discover wider relationships and when we match our personal experiences to broader trends in society.

If people are to have an effective involvement in social transformation, they need a critical understanding both of the society in which they live and of the alternative visions which people share.  Global Education aims at such an understanding.

This programme is aimed at professionals who seek to reflect on issues of concern.  As such, it is not so directly geared towards action and practical involvement as some of our other programmes, yet it could impact on the way (for example) officer in NGOs perceive and carry out their role.