Global Citizenship Education

Guiding Principle 4. Making Local to Global

What is Making Local to Global?

Global Citizenship Education (GCE) thrives when students can see the connections between their own lives and the broader world. By making explicit links between local issues and global challenges, educators can help young people to understand the interconnectedness of our world and their role within it. This approach deepens students' awareness of global issues and makes these issues more relevant and tangible. 

In this section, we will explore strategies for setting local issues in global contexts. This will enable learners to draw meaningful connections that inspire action and a deeper sense of global responsibility. Through these connections, students will be supported to view themselves as active participants in a global community, capable of making a difference both at home and abroad.

Before taking on any GCE topic, ask these two questions

1. What can we do locally and nationally that will have a positive impact globally?
2. How do we connect what is happening globally to local and national issues?

Making local to global links can be challenging. We have to remember to:

• link local actions to global causes, e.g. local biodiversity loss should also be considered in a global context such as the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest.
• build responsibility and empathy with people globally to tackle injustice.
• consider the global consequences of our local behaviour as consumers and voters.

Activities

• Bridges and Borders Game and Theme Sheet: This WWGS produced game explores the pros and cons of globalisation and localisation through a fun team based activity.
• Local to Global stories of Mining Resource Pack: This resource pack from Comhlámh contains an example of a local and a global case study on mining with role-play activities to help learners build empathy with people globally through setting a local context.

Videos

• Bangladeshi workers pay price for West's cheap clothes – building collapse: This BBC video (8.21mins) and article examine the local to global links with the cheap clothes industries and consumerism.
• What does it mean to be a citizen of the world? Ted Talk (17 mins): Hugh Evans started a movement that mobilises "global citizens," to take action in the fights against extreme poverty, climate change, gender inequality and more. "These are ultimately global issues, and they can ultimately only be solved by global citizens demanding global solutions from their leaders."
• Why Reuse? Why NOT Reuse?: This 4 minute video by Upstream makes a global connection to the impact of mass consumption, and demonstrates why it is important to reuse at a local and national level to change this habit.