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In June we invited students from schools across London to explore the Forest for change. Here are some of their reflections.

On Tuesday 22^nd June 2021, six children (including myself) went to Somerset house to see the ‘Forest for Change’. Within the forest, were 17 large mirrored pillars showing the UN Global Goals. We met Philip Jaffa, the forest architect who designed the Forest for Change. After we had a tour of this fascinating forest, we all got to draw parts of the forest from our point of view. I paired up with my friend and we drew the little grey mushrooms, a Norway Maple tree, ferns plus pink and yellow leaves. Each pillar in the forest had a quote from an influential person, including Greta Thunberg, David Attenborough, Michelle Obama and Nelson Mandela. Around the forest were rocks with people’s global requests for the UN. If I had a goal, it would be for there to be fewer starving children in the world.

Keti, Hugh Myddelton School

On Tuesday 22^nd June 2021, myself and five other classmates ventured to Somerset House where we had a leisurely stroll to the mesmerising Forest for Change.  We admired the 400 trees and the 17 Global Goal pillars which promise a better future for generations to come. After we explored the wondrous forest, we met the forest architect, Philip Jaffa, and Lucy who represented Islington Clean Air Parents. Then we felt the wonderful leaves and the different, unique textures of each of them. Scattered around the calming atmosphere there were hidden stones which had a global goal written on them. In the centre of the forest, seventeen Global Goal pillars stood tall and proud, each as crucial as the other with inspirational quotes from Nelson Mandela to Greta Thunberg inscribed onto them. When we finished reading the goals, we drew beautiful sketches of the forest. We feel so lucky that some of the trees we saw that day are coming to our school. Going there has taught me the beauty of trees and nature.

Ipar, Hugh Myddelton School

On Tuesday 22^nd June 2021, my classmates and I took a stroll through London to Somerset House to see the Forest for Change. We met some really nice and inspirational people there as well as Philip Jaffa (the forest architect) who told us about his inspiration to bring together the trees into one big, majestic and mind-blowing forest. We got to walk around the forest and feel the different textures of the bark and leaves. My personal favourite was the hazel birch tree. Within the forest, there was a mesmerising inner circle with 17 global goals inscribed onto mirrored pillars. Each pillar had a goal which explained facts about that goal as well as a quote from an inspirational person.  Figures included Nelson Mandela, Michelle Obama, Helen Keller and Greta Thunberg. My favourite quote was, “Many live without love but no-one without water.” There were 16 goals in total and the last pillar was for us to make our own goal. My global goal would be for there to be peace in the world and to stop violence everywhere

Dalya, Hugh Myddelton School

It is such a delight to go on trips again and immerse ourselves into the best that London has to offer.  We had an amazing experience at the Somerset House at the “Forest for Change” project. Within Somerset house it has always been prohibited to grow trees as part of an exhibition. This year as part of the Somerset House “Biennale” exhibition; Es Devlin decided to challenge this rule. He chose to bring a forest to the city to help us reflect upon their value to the globe. From our visit we reflected upon the legacy of forests and their role in the fight against climate change. We learnt about the importance of flora for our ecosystem and its positive impact on our environment. In fact, the “forest architect” shared with us that 30 “forests” the size of the exhibition would equate to enough carbon capture to remedy 300 flights to Australia. Whilst the range of trees on exhibition each serve a purpose within a coniferous climate. The floral diversity that we saw was fascinating and the experience made me ponder about the intricate relationships between each living being on our planet.

I enjoyed getting lost within the forest and exploring the odors of pine, the warmth of the red filbert hazel and the texture of the sequoia. I quietly relished the gentle time to myself to draw and reflect in nature. I reflected upon which of the trees around me will be present in Southwark when I am an old man.

Morisi, Harris Academy Peckham

WORLD’S LARGEST LESSON HAS CREATED A YOUTH ADVISORY PANEL!

The Advisory Panel is made up of children from 18 different countries around the world, all of whom share their ideas and feedback on how WLL can help to support children take action for the Global Goals. We’ll be highlighting the work these amazing group are doing throughout the year – so look out for future updates!

Here, Mar from Spain, explains what her school is doing to take action for the Global Goals.

“Hello! In my school we are doing many projects to make the world a better place. First of all, my school is a green school, we recycle a lot, we have many different coloured containers to distinguish what garbage goes there.

For example, in the blue bin we put in paper.

In the yellow bin we throw in juice and milk containers to be recycled.

We are also doing projects in class to learn how the planet is changing, because it’s changing very fast and we have to stop it.

In Science class we are doing a project of water. We are talking about the quality of water in our cities and the scarcity of water in some places. We are learning a lot. Now we know that a lot of women and children, around the world have to walk many hours every day to obtain drinkable water.

In English class we asked our parents and grandparents questions, by doing this we could see that the world has changed a lot since our parents and grandparents were younger. Now there’s more pollution and the air is more polluted so this affects our health. We are making actions to reduce pollution in our cities and to have better health. How much the planet has changed has encouraged us to try to improve it, each one doing an action to save the world.”

Our school goal is to reduce pollution around the planet. We think that if we reduce pollution in schools, we can contribute a small part to improving the world!”

Mar

World’s Largest Lesson has recently created a Youth Advisory Panel!

The Advisory Panel is made up of children from 18 different countries around the world, all of whom share their ideas and feedback on how WLL can help to support children take action for the Global Goals. We’ll be highlighting the work these amazing group are doing throughout the year – so look out for future updates!

Here, Dharma aged 11 from Jordan, explains how she takes action for the Global Goals by supporting the Green Wheels initiative and why she thinks taking care of our planet is important. 

“Green Wheels is an initiative that helps poor and disabled kids in Jordan as well as helping to heal the planet at the same time. “Green” in Green Wheels stands for helping the planet and spreading green all over the world, and “Wheels” stands for the wheelchairs that we help to buy. The idea is simple. We collect disposable plastic items such as the caps from water bottles, soda cans and more. Once we have a large amount we sell them to factories to recycle them. Then Green Wheels uses this money to buy wheelchairs for disabled children as well as other essential supplies. I have been collecting plastic items for over two years now.

My favourite part in taking action for the Global Goals is motivating the people around me in my community to collect plastic bottle caps. I feel really proud when I receive items collected by toddlers and younger children because I feel like I have played a part in helping them to understand how to protect our planet and each other. 

My goal is to save the planet!”

Dharma

For the 6^th time World’s Largest Lesson has been celebrated in Denmark, this year joined by Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Mary!

Every year World’s Best News and more than 45 organizations behind the Danish version of World’s Largest Lesson ‘Verdenstimen’ and the Municipality of Copenhagen invite students from local schools to a special live edition of World’s Largest Lesson. The event takes place in the beautiful Copenhagen Townhall.

For the second year, Crown Princess Mary joined the event together with the Minister for Development, Mr. Rasmus Prehn and selected students, teachers and partners from Verdenstimen. The event was designed to be fun, thought-provoking and entertaining at the same time. ‘Lakserytteren’ who is a famous influencer in Denmark and ambassador for UNICEF was invited to draw ‘The World’s Best Drawing’ during the event. And everyone played corona safe football for the Global Goals.

Because of covid-19 restrictions of the number of participants was less than normal. Instead we invited schools all over Denmark to participate in a Live Streaming on Facebook. Over 1,200 people participated in the event online.

Photocredit: Lasse Bak Mejlvang/World’s Best News

Our amazing community of educators have been teaching students about the Global Goals and inspiring the next generation of change makers. 

To celebrate World Teachers’ Day, here’s a small selection of some of their brilliant work.

Bhavna Mathew – IBPYP Educator at Pathways World School, India

Bhavna has been teaching her students about the Global Goals with a focus on protecting our planet. As well as using World’s Largest Lesson resources, they have taken part in two brilliant partner projects: the Global Goals Project and the Climate Action Project. They are a great way to connect with other schools while teaching the Global Goals – check them out!

You can see a video compiling some of Bhavna’s students’ work below.

Mary Paterson – Head Teacher of Dunbarney Primary School, UK

Mary describes how she and her team have been working during lockdown: “Whilst the school building was closed, students carried on learning at home. In May and June we had a whole school focus on Global Goals. Our theme was: We all have a responsibility to make small changes and collectively we can make a difference.

To keep parents and the wider community involved and informed we shared information about this learning via Facebook and Twitter. We used SWAY via Office 360 to collate the learning.”

Click the links below to find out more.

Primary 6: Inequalities

Primary 4: Explorers and World Water Day

Primary 1: Setting our Global Goals

Tony Muchiri – Teacher at Crawford International School, Kenya

Alongside his teaching, Tony is author of several leadership books and a leadership consultant. You can find out more about Tony’s work here.

#OBEC Young Leaders for SDGs, Thailand

The Ministry of Education in Thailand has been doing fantastic work to train the next generation of SDG educators – across the whole country!

In August this year they held a national workshop called Train the Teachers of SDGs. The workshop led to the creation of teams of master trainers, who will go on to train and mentor teachers for the national SDG youth leadership programme.

Monica Durning – Teacher at St Columba’s High School, UK

Finally, Monica has been teaching students about SDG 13: Climate Action using our brand new climate learning resources in their art and design class, where they made some recycled face masks!

A huge thank you to all the educators helping children and young people teaching children about the Global Goals. To join our community sign up to the newsletter here and if you’d like to share your own work get in touch!

During lockdown educators and parents have been using the new Explorers for the Global Goals activities to keep kids learning.

Explorers for the Global Goals is a set of colourful characters and fun activities for ages 4-8. Children can develop 5 key characteristics – empathy, curiosity, problem solving, creativity and effective communication – and grow up to change the world!

Below are some of our favourite photos sent on social media using #GlobalGoalsExplorers. Check out the activities here and send us some photos of your own tagging @theworldslesson on social media!

Dunbarney Primary School, UK

Teachers used the Explorers resources as part of their online learning curriculum. Children and their parents took part in all five activities and sent in photos as evidence of their work. Older students also took part in wider discussions around the Global Goals.

Bantaskin Primary School, UK

Waverley Kindergarten, New York

This year we collaborated with Empatico to develop a fellowship programme to connect educators and students from around the world with each other and learn about the Global Goals together.

Educators were connected to a partner teacher and over the course of online interactions with their partner class, students were introduced to the Global Goals, and shared ideas on how they could take action for the Goals in and outside their classrooms.

Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 causing school closures throughout 2020, the fellowship was cut short. However, our fellows did an incredible job adapting learning to fit around this incredibly disruptive time for students. In total 30 incredible educators completed our 2020 Fellowship.

Hear from one of our successful fellows Vanashree Nair to learn more:

“From locating the country on the world map to learning everything about that country was what we did for the next few and got prepared for our first exchange.

On the day of our first exchange when we finally got to see our new friends, we felt so happy and we’re really enthusiastic about learning new things together. Later on, the partner class showed their classroom and their best out of waste art works and exchanged the current understanding of SDG’s.

As the discussion moved further, we understood the role of a SDG Goalkeeper and pledged to be one, for our own community. We decided to focus on reducing our paper wastage and plastic consumption rates within our own classroom. This experience was something my kids have never gotten from any sort of textbook out there. 

It was so nice to see Mumtahima who happened to be a Teach for Bangladesh fellow, working so hard in her classroom and thus providing her kids with international exposure. Her classroom was extremely beautiful and the kind of love and compassion she operated within her classroom inspired me and motivated me to incorporate love as a core theme in our classroom as well.

I have found a friend in Mumtahina who has always enquired about me and my kids and has always shown love and care towards my kiddos. Through the respectful lesson planning session, WhatsApp chats and frequent emails we have got to learn more about each other. This trans-border experience has changed my thoughts about relationships and virtual learning.

I have recommended the fellowship to a couple of friends already. I would like to continue teaching my kids more about SDGs and to run a project within the community along with my kids which would be based on the SDGs aligned with the problems that persist in the community.”

Thank you to all our 2020 Fellows!

The do your :bit challenge was founded by the Microbit Foundation, World’s Largest Lesson and Arm. It is a global competition for children and teens to combine creativity and technology in solutions for the Global Goals.

The challenge invites kids and teens to identify and research a problem, and then design and a code solution using the BBC micro:bit. In 2019 more than 50 community partner organisations activated their networks across all regions, and the challenge received over 1,000 entries from all over the world.

You can find out more about the challenge and see last year’s incredible winners here. The 2o2o do your :bit challenge will launch in September – follow us on social media and subscribe to our newsletter to be the first to know!

In 2019 the World’s Largest Lesson helped to bring the SDGs to over 1.2 million Nigerians.

We ran a week long, country-wide youth activation led by over 4000 youth volunteers where children took part in a lesson that invited them to think about the future that they want for Nigeria and resulted in them making an ‘ask’ to the Ministry of Education for the inclusion of the SDGs in the national curriculum.

This was followed up with a subsequent activation, reaching communities and families across Nigeria who took the Goals to their hearts and made strong connections between the global SDGs framework and what they observe in their own communities.

Club17 Africa – our SDGs after-school clubs, were also launched, giving young people an opportunity to explore the Goals in more detail – beginning a journey as Global Goals champions and changemakers. To see more about Club17 Africa, check out our campaigns page!