Inspiring Youth to Become Active Global Citizens

In the 2012-13 school year, Global Concerns Classroom (GCC) reached 3,000 youth and 500 educators through direct programming to increase global awareness and action in U.S. secondary schools. Indirectly, GCC reached an additional 300 educators and their students through GCC resource sharing and support in classrooms.

Highlights from the year include hosting two annual global summit workshops in New York and Chicago, bringing together over 80 students each workshop from various high schools to work collaboratively to find solutions to a pressing global issue. A new theme was featured for this year's NY global summit which focused on "Women and Girls: The Key to the Future".

In addition, GCC shared 34 speaker presentations both in-person and through Skype, faciliated 12 student workshops at individual schools, supported three after-school clubs and a human rights class through a GCC-created Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) curriculum. As NYC high school Human Rights teacher, Julie Mann, comments:

 “Working with GCC's MDG curriculum was transformative for my students and myself. Not only were all of the activities extremely well thought out, interactive, and highly engaging, but they also involved critical thinking at the highest level. Each week my students were challenged to research topics related to the MDG's and human rights, synthesize the information, and create real-world solutions to very serious problems of global poverty. This curriculum is not only perfectly aligned with the new Core Curriculum standards, but offers students a chance to develop empathy for human rights crises going on today, and what's even better, it gives them a chance to see how they can make a change.”

Links:

• Global Concerns Classroom