Global Fairness: Global Learning at School

It is a sad reality that the economic, environmental and social disparities between the global South and the global North are constantly increasing. People in the global North must recognize how their own lifestyles and consumer behaviour fundamentally affect the Global South and what they can do to tackle these inequalities.

The project “Global Fairness” has taken up this theme and initiated it where people are prepared for life – in schools. “Global Fairness” was the follow-up project to “Awareness for Fairness“ and its innovative evolution. Important topics around “Global Fairness” and the MDGs such as climate change and climate justice, migration and Fairtrade were integrated into everyday school life – in curricula, educational offers and everyday teaching. The project was therefore aimed at school stakeholders – in particular pupils, teachers and school administrations.

The project enabled more than 30 schools in Berlin, Linz, Prague, Leeds and Budapest to be certified as Fair Schools and a total of almost 60 schools to expand their school programmes to include Global Learning and MDG issues. 17 south-north school partnerships have been established or strengthened in the project. Newly developed teaching materials (brochures, workbooks and exhibitions) support teachers in communicating global topics and increase their methodological competence. A highlight of “Global Fairness” was the development of the “Global Classroom”, which was included in the Global Development Learning Framework as good practice. Global fairness could thus be sustainably anchored in the school profiles.

More than 20,000 pupils were inspired by global themes in numerous school and learning events – e.g. in film competitions, theatre projects, exhibitions, climate breakfasts and workshops. In this way they not only strengthened their own awareness, but also that of their fellow students in the long term – through a peer-to-peer approach that trained more than 100 school children to become “Agents for Change”.

The special project benefit for Berlin was the increased focus of schools on Global Learning, fair cooperation and international networking as well as support in implementing the new curricular requirements for the learning area of global development in Berlin schools.