“2015 is a chance to change history,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon told the young people at the UN’s Youth Forum. “You are the first generation with the potential to end poverty and the last generation to avoid the worst effects of climate change.” These words ring true for all our young people and, as educators, we should urge them to engage with the post-2015 agenda and participate in shaping the future.
Futures perspective
We need to make the future a more explicit concern in education. In the 21st Century the current state of the planet guarantees a very different future from today. Our pupils need opportunities to explore what sort of future they want for themselves and our society, and the actions needed to help bring about that future. There is no single vision of the future. However, a preferable future must be sustainable and shaped by voices from all spheres of society.
Sustainable Development Goals
Within our classrooms we can provide space to shape this idea of what a sustainable future is, as well as engaging with the current global debates shaping the long awaited Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which will be announced at the UN in New York in September.
The SDGs will replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which are targets that were set in 2000 that were supposed to have been achieved by 2015. Huge progress towards these goals has been made in the past 15 years, but this masks unequal rates of development and growing inequality while progress has been slower in Sub-Saharan Africa than other parts of the world.
The Sustainable Development Goals will build on the progress of the MDGs and work to reduce persistent inequalities and new challenges that face people and the planet we live on. An important feature of the new goal setting is that everyone has the right to make sure their voice is heard.
Sustainable classrooms
Our young people’s ability to shape the future and build something more sustainable and equitable relies on them having the right skills, knowledge and attitudes, which a global citizenship approach can help develop. There are a number of useful frameworks that support planning for this approach. The Development Compass Rose provides a simple framework for planning any topic at any stage of the curriculum while highlighting the key Learning for Sustainability concepts within it. The environmental impacts are considered alongside the social, economic and political, through a critical questioning approach. It opens up a topic and provides space for learners to reflect on the many dimensions to a topic or issue; personal, social, spatial and temporal.
What are your priorities?
Through the website www.myworld2015.org everyone can vote on their own priorities and results will be fed into the UN alongside the results of participants from all over the world.
Participants are asked to respond to points about health, education, political freedoms, equality and environmental protection. Many of these priorities are linked into rights and provide a great opportunity to place those in a meaningful global context while adding wider voices to a worldwide initiative to shape the future of the planet.
An inclusive process
Particular emphasis has been placed on making sure people without access to the Internet, people who are unable to read and other groups who are socially excluded or disenfranchised can have their say too. Teams of community workers, NGOs, faith-based groups, youth workers and others have worked offline to gather as many voices as possible.
This is a longitudinal survey and the data it has produced has fed into the decision-making process for the new SDGs. Any data gathered after the launch will still be captured, and it is a way for ordinary people to voice their opinions on global issues.
Why does your vote matter?
You can be part of a global vote at the United Nations, allowing people for the first time to have a direct say in shaping a better world.
The votes matter. The UN is working with governments everywhere to define the next global agenda to address extreme poverty and preserve the planet. The data from My World continues to inform these processes and will be used by decision makers around the world.
“I want this to be the most inclusive global development process the world has ever known.”UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
Useful resources
- Futures Perspective
- Oxfam Global Citizenship framework (pdf)
- Development Compass Rose (pdf)
