Global Citizenship Education
GCE aims to create responsible, caring, and active citizens who work to improve their communities and the wider world.
VC and Global Citizenship Education
Helping people understand the world and their role in it
Global Citizenship Education (GCE) is about helping people understand the world and their role in it. It teaches respect for others, awareness of global issues like poverty and climate change, and encourages people to think critically and take action to make the world fairer, more peaceful, and sustainable. GCE aims to create responsible, caring, and active citizens who work to improve their communities and the wider world.
Viatores Christi integrates Global Citizenship Education through:
- Volunteer Training: Educating and preparing volunteers on cultural sensitivity, global justice, sustainability, and ethical engagement.
- Public Engagement in Ireland: Hosting talks, workshops, and campaigns including to church attendees, to raise awareness about global issues such as inequality, climate change, and migration.
- Development Education: Supporting community-based learning that empowers people in Ireland and abroad to become active global citizens.
Viatores Christi’s (VC) training programmes provide individuals in Ireland and globally with high quality, impactful opportunities that positions learning within a GCE framework. Follow recent projects supported by Irish Aid and Erasmus, VC has successfully adapted its learning products and programmes to be more inclusive and accessible to adults with and without disabilities in Ireland and globally. This has been achieved by providing a number of different ways in which learners can engage with the programmes (online a-synchronous and synchronous, and face to face). Important accessibility elements developed include closed captions and sign language interpretation, drawing on expertise in disability and inclusion to inform the content, presentation and pedagogy of learning products, and testing and review by people with disabilities to ensure accessibility needs have been met.
Across VCs learning programmes there is a clear focus on providing learning around global citizenship, development, disability and inclusion which promotes positive and informed action for change. This has involved enhancing existing subject matter and creating new content in these subjects across the learning portfolio, framing the different learning products and programmes within a clear strategic GCE framework, and putting in place a number of elements that promote active global citizenship. Data from learner and facilitators feedback shows that the programmes have been successful in improving people’s knowledge and understanding of GCE, disability and accessibility, and Climate Change.
Inclusive GCE within VC
Delivering high quality, accessible, online GCE training
Viatores Christi (VC) Ireland was the lead partner in an Erasmus+ funded project called Inclusive Global Citizenship Education. It was implemented in partnership with Abilis Foundation Finland.
This Erasmus+ project harnessed expertise in adult education and disability inclusion to develop and deliver a high quality, accessible, online Global Citizenship training module targeted at adults, those with disabilities and those without.
The main objectives of the project were:
- To develop a high quality, accessible, Global Citizenship Education module for an online platform targeted at adults, abled and those with disabilities.
- To harness the experience of the EU network and in particular the skills of a well-respected disability organisation, Abilis, to assist in this process while at the same time benefiting from the cross-fertilisation of ideas and processes in the area of adult education in this sector.
- To trial and launch the training as a pilot project to include people living with disability to ensure that it meets the objectives of accessibility as set out in the development stage
By producing accessible training content and harnessing digital technologies to host training online, many barriers to access were removed. This was achieved by using closed captioning, sign language and ensuring accessible text and visuals were used in the creation of the module. This enabled participation by persons unable to attend due to geographical location.
A further project was supported by Irish Aid in 2022-24 with the following objectives;
- Support VC to further expand its Inclusive GCE module (research and pilot supported by Erasmus+ funding) to deliver to adult audiences in Ireland.
- Support VC to embed accessible inclusive Development Education (GCE) into existing training programme modules.
- Provide training for facilitators to deliver accessible, inclusive Development Education (GCE) training
Outcome and Impact
There are several ways to become a member
Prior to the Irish Aid project, VC had two strategic commitments a) to improve its work within GCE and embed it more fully across its programmes and b) to focus on inclusion and disability in development work. This project successfully met these separate commitments, and supported VC to achieve beyond its original aim by bringing together these two commitments in the establishment of a coherent and strategic training programme that provides a clear framework for addressing both areas.
The project allowed more coherence across VCs training programmes by improving accessibility of development training programmes on UpSkills which can be accessed as stand alone, but the improved accessibility of the trainings allowed them to be further leveraged to provide more value to the Venture Training. VC also established a thematic approach to its Venture training, ensuring a GCE element within each day of the training. This began with a workshop on GCE early in the course and was followed by a reflection session on every training day where participants examined their learning from a GCE perspective and putting the skills, knowledge and attitudes developed into a global citizenship framework or context.