Project
What is Just Maps?
As its predecessor Just Action, Just Maps is an Erasmus+ project co-funded by the European Union, focusing on Global Citizenship Education for primary and secondary school teachers and students.
Students will be involved in a transnational participatory process that starts with the mapping of their cities, with the support of teachers as facilitators.
They will gather important information to analyse and improve, as global citizens, the life of their communities: facts and issues regarding the environment, inequalities, social justice and history will be the topics of their research. Based on the data collected, they will build a local digital map. The maps from the different partner countries, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the different areas, will be systematised by young people themselves: each country will elect a delegation of local mappers who will take part in the Transnational Council of Mappers, charged with examining the status quo and imagining actions for improvement. They will do this together, noting how local problems are interconnected, and keeping a non-Eurocentric gaze capable of taking them beyond Europe (Kenya). Once back home, they will try to implement the proposed solutions, with their local community, and launch an awareness-raising campaign for their fellow citizens.
Methodology
Just Maps is:
- student-led and student empowering in all its phases: teachers give up their traditional power and become facilitators of the learning process. They will be trained to support students in action, so that children can develop their self-efficiency and self-esteem: it’s crucial that students’ empowerment begins at school, by transferring to them decision-making power. Children already have competences to address challenges, facilitators give support to widen them. students will be protagonists from the very beginning to the end, including in the evaluation of their campaigns. In this way, they will be aware of the results of their actions, reinforcing their trust in participatory mechanisms and the desire to take part in democratic life.
- action-oriented: it aims to bring students to act as global citizens in their communities with a learn-by-doing approach, and to train teachers as facilitators of this process.
- justice-based: it engages students in a global citizenship participatory process involving not only schools from Europe, but also from the Global South (Kenya). Commonly, GCE in EU explores issues from a Global Northern perspective, as they usually don’t have the possibility to take in Global Southerners’ direct accounts. This will help children to develop empathy, by choosing solidarity over charity (to avoid the “white savior syndrome”).
- supported by innovative tools and methodologies such as LEGO®SERIOUSPLAY which helps students to visualize their ideas and work on them by building, modifying, interpreting and explaining models, and system thinking.
Beneficiaries
Primary and secondary school students (8-15 years old)
from different countries in Europe and beyond. The age range is the same as Just Action project, to give continuation to the project’s action-oriented approach. During the project’s first implementation, the involved students will be from the Global North (Spain, Italy, Ireland and Poland) and Global South (Kenya). Later on, as methodology and actions are validated, the project can be replicated in several other countries (the resources will be open to anyone willing to use them!).
Primary and secondary school teachers
they will actively take part in the methodology-design process, they will be trained and share the acquired knowledge with their colleagues in a horizontal learning process.
They will experience an action- based learning process as facilitators, and they will work on monitoring and evaluating results, also by using the Just Action’s reflection tool, based on a “head-heart-hands” approach.
Local communities from the implementing countries
they will become part of the learning process, and they will benefit from children’s participation with fresh ideas to solve community issues.
Objectives
Our objectives
Students
- Encourage students’ engagement and awareness as global citizens.
- Support them in an international participatory process, making them active citizens with a learn-by-doing approach.
- Reinforce their critical and intercultural skills.
- Develop a justice-based approach to local and global interconnected issues.
Teachers
- Co-design an action-based Global Citizenship Education methodology with their peers from other countries and experienced organisations for sustainability and behavior change.
- Developing a facilitator approach to make students the protagonists of their own learning process.
- Fostering global citizenship-related behavior change in teachers, including not only sustainable habits but also social and climate justice awareness.
The Team
The partnership is formed by organisations from Global Action Plan International network (active in fostering sustainable behavior change) and schools from five countries from Europe (Italy, Spain, Ireland, Poland) and Africa (Kenya).
The lead partner is Global Action Plan Spain
Frans Lenglet – GAP International
It’s learning about the world and learning how all those different people, in different societies, in different countries, from different backgrounds, can not only live together but also construct a fair and just society.
Jodie Velarde – GAP International
To me, Global Citizenship Education is all about empowering people to take action on causes that benefit people and planet all over the world. Often, it’s helpful to give a local context before delving into the global implications, but it’s a huge and important topic for the whole world to consider.
Marylin Melhmann – GAP International
On the one hand, it’s about facts and knowledge, the rights and responsibilities of humans, the rights of other beings. There is a certain amount of factual knowledge that needs to be transferred to the pupils. That’s the first thing. The second thing is: it is a lens through which all other subjects can be viewed. In other words, it’s a set of values that you can apply to any topic that you are working with or teaching. And then, the third thing is: it’s a skill set which enables transformative change. Because we are not talking about an education to accept what is the status quo, we are talking about education to build a better future. And so, it has to be teaching the skills needed to enable transformative change.
Sandrina Felder – GAP International
For me, I guess it’s like getting a sense of belonging together and living in one world, sharing experiences, sharing topics that concern us all, and also to get active together when it comes to different global challenges like, for example, climate change or peace or whatever. I mean, some challenges they don’t stop at borders, they concern everyone of us. I think Global Citizenship Education for me means to get a sense of this all, and to get to know the basics of different kinds of topics.