The ECIGAL Research Group and the NGDO Solidaridade Internacional de Galicia organize a space where education professionals from different Spanish autonomous communities talk about critical and transformative education.
The Education for Global Citizenship Research Group (ECIGAL) and the NGO Solidaridade Internacional de Galicia (SIG) invited teachers, NGDO professionals and teachers from all over Spain to participate in the Webinar Dialogue on Education for Global Citizenship at school: Realities and Proposals on the afternoons of June 7 and 9. This meeting, with 36 people registered, aimed to generate participatory spaces for questioning and dialogue in which to gather new nuances and perspectives on Education for Global Citizenship and share experiences.
The virtual meeting began with a presentation of the project by the coordinator of the research group, Renée DePalma, who gave way to each of the team members to present the main results along various lines of inquiry. The lines presented were later analyzed and discussed in small groups of attendees, who concluded the conversation with hopeful messages regarding the progress of GCE, its recognition at the curricular level and ways forward. "We need training to carry out another type of education that builds critical citizenship towards a more just world, towards a transformative education that allows awareness and understanding of approaches to global social justice," pointed out one of the participants. "We need good political education, which is not about political parties," said another participant.
In the second session of the conference, the mapping tool Mapa Cénit de Experiencias de Educación para la Ciudadanía Global was presented, an interactive map that was created with the objectives of recognising and making experiences visible in order to provide reference points for consultation and guidance to get started in GCE, to collect resources closer and to connect a community that reflects and advances together towards new approaches. The team presented the ground covered by the project to date and the aims for the Map's growth in the future, thus encouraging those attending to join this community.
"The world needs you", Haydée Castillo.
The meeting ended with a "global surprise" for the attendees. Haydée Castillo, human rights defender in Nicaragua, addressed the session with a motivational speech on the responsibility of education professionals. "In the face of so much criminality, you are invaluable people, the world needs you (...) We are living in very complex times where the dignity of the human being is in dispute. If it is disputed by the market, organised crime, the drug business... It is up to us as educators, as members of this community, to seek how to deconstruct this framework and enter into this discussion," she said.
María Caride, SIG representative, took up Haydée Castillo's words and ended the event with a hopeful tone, highlighting the importance of weaving networks and working collectively. "After reflecting on how we work in educational institutions and what we can improve, and listening to testimonies that, although at different levels, address the same issues, we can see that we are connected, that the problems are global and the solutions have to be global. Each and every one of us on our own scale, and now it is up to us to attend to the socio-educational scale", she concluded.
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