Tag: global citizen

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Inquiry into SDGs: Decent Work & Economic Growth

This is a series of provocations designed to provide resources for students to inquire into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. For more, click here. 

A good summary of the Decent Work & Economic Growth global goal is as follows:

“The SDGs promote sustained economic growth, higher levels of productivity and technological innovation. Encouraging entrepreneurship and job creation are key to this, as are effective measures to eradicate forced labour, slavery and human trafficking. With these targets in mind, the goal is to achieve full and productive employment, and decent work, for all women and men by 2030.”

United Nations Development Programme

Below are resources intended to help students think about how they might make personal connections to this goal. How does it impact their local areas? How might their choices help?

Resource #1: PeopleMovin: interactive online graph of migration flows across the world


Resource #2: Fair Hotels advertisement by Naissance

Resource #3: My Brother by Audrey Yeo

Resource #4: One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference by Katie Smith Milway & Eugenie Fernandes

Provocation Questions:

  • What is “decent work” like?
  • What are the benefits of a human having a job?
  • How is job availability changing?
  • What are the effects when a person is unable to work? For themselves? For their families? For their communities?
  • How is work connected to healthy economies, communities, and countries?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

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Inquiry into SDGs: Affordable & Clean Energy

This is a series of provocations designed to provide resources for students to inquire into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. For more, click here. 

Affordable and Clean Energy is a goal intended not only to ensure access to electricity for all, but to seek for renewable, clean sources. Use these resources to help your students inquire into this goal, and how they might contribute!

Resource #1: Small World Energy by Niles Heckman (see also the thought-provoking sequel, World Energy Crisis)

Resource #2: Go Beyond Oil by Greenpeace via The Kid Should See This

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhX0mSipSk8

Resource #3: Energy Defined by Nova via The Kid Should See This

Resource #4: The Solar Do-Nothing Machine via The Kid Should See This

Resource #5: Don’t Worry, Drive On: Fossil Fuels & Fracking Lies by Alex Perry

Resource #6: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba & Bryan Mealer, illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon

Provocation Questions:

  • What is energy?
  • How do humans harness energy for our benefit?
  • What is our responsibility to work toward cleaner energy?
  • What are the different perspectives on energy use that involves fossil fuels vs energy use that involves renewable sources?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

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Inquiry into SDGs: Life Below Water

This is a series of provocations designed to provide resources for students to inquire into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. For more, click here. 

The global goal of Life Below Water looks the way humans are treating our oceans, targeting issues such as marine pollution, over-exploited fish populations, and acidification of our oceans. And given the fact that 3 billion depend on the marine industry for their livelihoods, we need to find more sustainable use of these resources. Share these videos and books with your students to help them think about how these issues impact them!

Resource #1: Plastics Watch by BBC (see more clips here)

Resource #2: Henry – Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Resource #3: The Ocean Cleanup Technology, Explained via The Kid Should See This

Resource #4: Where Did the Oil Go? by NRDC via The Kid Should See This

Resource #5: Manfish: A Story of Jacques Cousteau by Jennifer Berne & Éric Puybaret; The Brilliant Deep by Kate Messner & Matthew Forsythe; Life in the Ocean: The Story of Oceanographer Sylvia Earle by Claire A. Nivola

Provocation Questions:

  • What resources do the oceans provide that humans use?
  • What is the relationship like between our oceans and humans?
  • How might that relationship improve to help both our oceans and humans, and what is our responsibility to do so?
  • What obstacles stand in the way of improving the way we care for our oceans?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

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Inquiry into SDGs: Good Health & Well-Being

This is a series of provocations designed to provide resources for students to inquire into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. For more, click here. 

The global goal of Good Health & Well-Being aims to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.” Use these resources to help students inquire into what it means to provide health for all. 

Resource #1: What is a Food Desert? by Carb Loaded

Resource #2: Calm.com (see Calm for Schools free program)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZb3TQ_URpU

Resource #3: The Story of Cholera by The Global Health Media Project

Resource #4: Thing Things We Carry by The Herd

https://vimeo.com/303182924

Resource #5: The Curious Garden by Peter Brown (read here by johnvu)

Provocation Questions:

  • What is wellness?
  • What is health care?
  • How might good health and wellness solutions look different around the world? How might they look the same?
  • How does access to health care impact an individual? A community? The world?
  • How does wellness impact a person’s life?
  • How does what humans need for healthcare change over time?
  • What is our responsibility for good health and wellness? For ourselves? For others?
  • What is the connection between knowledge and good health?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

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Inquiry Into SDGs: Clean Water & Sanitation

This is a series of provocations designed to provide resources for students to inquire into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. For more, click here. 

The first challenge in helping students inquire into the need to provide clean water and sanitation is to recognize what a privilege it is to have! These resources are intended to help them consider this global goal and how they might help.

Resource #1: G R A N T E D by Michele Guieu

Resource #2: Why Water by CharityWater

Resource #3: Global Citizen – Water & Sanitation by BRIKK

#Resource #4: Water Stewardship by Nice & Serious & WWF

Resource #5: The Water Princess by Susan Verde, Georgie Badiel & Peter Reynolds

Provocation Questions:

  • How is clean water important to humans?
  • How is sanitation important to humans?
  • Why is clean water scarce for so many people? How does this scarcity impact an individual? A family? A community?
  • What is our responsibility to manage water well?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

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Inquiry into SDGs: No Poverty

This is a series of provocations designed to provide resources for students to inquire into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. For more, click here. 

Extreme poverty is defined as a deprivation of basic human needs, such as food, shelter, sanitation, clean water, and education. The Sustainable Development Goal to end extreme poverty by 2013 is within reach–the number has declined by half between 1990 and 2015, and this global goal aims to finish the job. Share the following resources to help students inquire into this goal and to learn ways they can make a difference.

Resource #1: Extreme Poverty: Choices by US AID

Resource #2: United Way Poverty

Resource #3: Poverty, Inc

Resource #6: 5 Ways to Fight Poverty by Outreach International

Resource #5: Living On a Dollar a Day photoseries by Renée Byer. See more from the series at Time.

  • Jestina Koko, 25, with her daughter Satta Quaye, 5. Crippled since the age of three, she depends on her arms to lift and drag herself. She survives by doing laundry for others, selling cookies on the street, and begging in Monrovia, Liberia. Both of them suffer from malaria. She wishes for a wheel chair, a private room to live in and for her daughter to go to school. They sleep in the hallway of a home that has no electric, toilet or running water and own nothing. August 29, 2010. PHOTOGRAPH COPYRIGHT ©RENÉE C. BYER
  • Rudra, 5, and his sister Suhani, 3, search for tea to drink at the Charan slum Settlement in Dharamsala, India, where they live with their family. They survive although two of their siblings recently died of malnutrition.
  • Following the death of his father, Alvaro Kalancha Quispe, 9, helps his family survive by herding. He opens the gate to the stone pen that holds the family’s alpacas and llamas each morning so they can graze throughout the hillsides during the day. He then heads off to school, but must round them up again in the evening in the Akamani mountain range of Bolivia in an area called Caluyo, about an hour from the city of Qutapampa. In this part of the world, the highlands of Bolivia, approximately 13,000 feet above sea level, residents live in homes with no insulation, no electricity, and no beds. Their water comes from streams that run off the snow-covered mountains. Their livelihood lies with their animals, for each animal produces about three pounds of fur each year, and each pound of fur is sold for 18 bolivianos, which amounts to about $2.50 U.S. All in all, this family may earn about $200 of income each year from the herd they watch over. PHOTOS COPYRIGHT ©RENÉE C. BYER

Resource #6: Fly Away Home by Eve Bunting

Provocation Questions:

  • What is poverty?
  • How can we be more aware of extreme poverty in our communities?
  • What is our responsibility to help end extreme poverty?
  • How can we support people living in poverty in a way that promotes human dignity?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

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Inquiry Into SDG’s: Responsible Consumption & Production

This is a series of provocations designed to provide resources for students to inquire into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. For more, click here. 

The concept of responsible consumption and production especially weighs on my mind this time of year as the holiday season approaches. Kath Murdoch recently shared an excellent post by George Monbiot that you may have seen since it was published in 2012. If not, be sure to check it out! One line that stood out to me in particular:

“…very rich people in Vietnam are now sprinkling ground rhino horn on their food or snorting it like cocaine to display their wealth. It’s grotesque, but it scarcely differs from what almost everyone in industrialised nations is doing: trashing the living world through pointless consumption.”

How might sharing this provocation spark more thoughtful consumption & production for our students? Use these resources to find out!

Resource #1: PYP Exhibition Staging from Sam Sherratt’s class: “Keep it simple, clear, and environmentally responsible. “

Resource #2: Lego artwork by Nathan Sawaya (Pop art series & Metamorphosis series)

by Nathan Sawaya

Resource #3: Sustainable Brands 2018 from Nice and Simple

Resource #4: The Most Sustainable Jeans by Parallel Studio

Resource #5: Sustainable Furniture by People for Smarter Cities

Resource #6: The Lorax by Dr. Suess

Provocation Questions:

  • What is production?
  • What is consumption?
  • What makes production or consumption sustainable?
  • What is our responsibility to produce and consume in a sustainable manner?
  • How does sustainable production/consumption compare with unsustainable production/consumption?
  • How does being responsible consumers help us better connect as human beings?