Themes addressed

In the European context the misperception and lack of knowledge of the migratory phenomenon are becoming increasingly worrying: Global Citizenship Education (GCE) can play an extremely important role in preventing the building of walls that impede the ever more necessary meetings between different cultures.

Modern technologies, digital tools, and social media have come to permeate our daily life, bringing about several benefits, as well as many flaws. Far too often, the digital world has turned into a sounding board for hate speech and fake news.

GCE is currently facing a great challenge: there is an urgent need to train citizens aware of the global dynamics, beyond the media propaganda and alarms that abound in many European countries today. We need to involve all people in the construction of a fair and equitable society and in the exercise of their rights and responsibilities towards others.

We want to construct a non-superficial narrative on migration, promoting human rights and intercultural dialogue. We consider the involvement of the educational community crucial for an awareness raising among young people and the entire society. We trust in the capacity of new generations to build societies free from fear that foster equality and social inclusion.

MigratED supports an advocacy campaign for the adoption of Global Citizenship Education policies and frameworks and digital tools as forms of inclusive learning, to promote fundamental values, intercultural dialogue and to combat discrimination.

Considering the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as a fundamental framework, our advocacy action aims at promoting GCE, as a necessary tool to achieve the 17 Goals of the 2030 Agenda and in triggering the cultural changes needed for the creation of fairer and more sustainable societies. GCE and inclusive learning represent a transformative educational action, based on the use of interactive and innovative teaching methods founded on dialogue and reflection, putting the learner at the centre.

With our actions and policy requests, we refer to Goal n. 4 on “inclusive and equitable quality education”, and particularly to Target 4.7:

As an EU consortium, we turn to local, national and EU institutional stakeholders and policy-makers to ask:

1) For the implementation of Global Citizens Education policies, with specific implementation strategies in each country, beginning with the local contexts in which the consortium works as a starting point for promoting good practices. A regulatory and institutional legitimacy of GCE would recognize it as the unique, concrete action capable of calling for an active role, as individuals and as a community, concerning the principles of environmental and social justice, promoting the understanding of decision-making processes at local and global level, as well as new ways of intervention and influence for the citizens.

2) For the adoption of forms of inclusive education in the formal school context, by foreseeing appropriate laws. Teaching on human rights, intercultural dialogue and on media-literacy should become a specific school subject or should be included transversally between the different courses. Training for teachers and educators on learning methods based on technology should be promoted, as well as the dissemination of good educational practices and teaching tools; finally, a minimum number of hours on these issues should be guaranteed in each school curriculum.