Citizenship Foundation blog posts

Who would you put in a directory of Twitter charity celebrities?

Michael — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:48:25 -0800

I’ve just become aware of a book (yes, a book) of Twitter celebrities. If there was a charity edition, who would you like to see in it and why?

I’ll start off with @RealHughJackman, for donating $100,000 to charity via Twitter.

Who else?

Digital Engagement Event: live coverage intended

Michael Grimes — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 08:07:12 -0700

On Tuesday I shall be attending the Digital Engagement Event, wearing my Citizenship Foundation hat and (probably) banging on about the importance of critical reflection.

I’m going to try live blogging on CoverItLive (time and energy permitting), so keep your eyes peeled.

Could and should a charity consortium run a democratic school?

Michael Grimes — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 08:59:13 -0700

“If youth charities can run schools can we expect these will have pupil voice and empowerment at the centre of the way they run?”

That was the content of a message posted to Twitter on Friday by Fiona Blacke. Presumably she was writing in response to the government’s scrapping of the £2million Academy sponsorship fee, currently required of voluntary and private sector organisations that want to sponsor schools. (More about the Academies programme.)

Asher Jacobsberg of involver picked up on this and asked if there was any interest in a consortium to “try it out”. He marked the message for the particular attention of a number of charities, including ourselves.

Clearly any project proposal for this would need to go through the proper internal channels, but it is an interesting topic for discussion:

is there a case to be made for a flagship school centred on pupil voice and democratic principles;
what would such a school look like;
could one be run successfully by a consortium of enthusiastic voluntary organisations;
if not, what possibilities are there for supporting other sponsors in achieving similar goals?

What do you think?

Act Global - New Project at the Citizenship Foundation

Ruxi — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:45:59 -0700

Citizenship Foundation will start the work on a new project this month. This is the first project that is funded by DFID at the Citizenship Foundation and it is run in partnership with Relief International UK.

Act Global aims to develop young peoples’ understanding of the connections between actions in their communities and the causes of global poverty, and it empowers them to take action on these causes at the local level.

The programme will involve 1,800 youth (600 per year) from Greater London in online discussions on the links between global poverty and actions within their community. These discussions will be moderated by experts from relevant fields and will utilise interactive media. 150 participants (50 per year) will be recruited as Global Youth Activists and attend a residential leadership training in which they work in groups to plan a project that addresses the causes of global poverty from within their communities.

Watch this space for more updates!

Putting critical reflection onto the Digital Engagement agenda

Michael Grimes — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 06:50:00 -0700

There is a lot of exciting work being done in regards to using technology for civic engagement. Most of it though seems to be about access to information, more efficient and effective public services, and enfranchisement of citizens to hold decision-makers to account.

These are all laudable of course. But there does seem to be something missing: effective civic engagement - or more specifically, effective citizenship - requires critical reflection by all involved, and not simply the release and management of data by one party and the exercising of rights by another.

There are lots of tools and services now that exploit public data to help citizens understand their environment in meaningful ways, and expose the workings of local and national government. For example, MySociety offers a number of useful engagement tools: FixMyStreet enables people to monitor and lobby their council on issues such as pot-holes; WriteToThem makes it easy to contact your local MP; WhatDoTheyKnow aids the writing and delivery of Freedom of Information requests.

What these approaches don’t do - and it’s not their remit to - is encourage critical reflection on the part of the people involved. Councilors could, in theory, respond to complaints made via FixMyStreet, which in turn could lead to reflective discussion between themselves and the complainant: but this will only happen if both parties are so inclined; the tool itself doesn’t nurture that level of engagement and responsibility.

And neither should it: its job is to open up the data and put power in the hands of citizens. But for that power to be effective and useful it needs to be coupled with an understanding of the process, and a willingness on the part of the citizen to accept they may be wrong; and by citizen I mean anyone: council officers and politicians are citizens too.

In his Digital Britain Final Report Lord Carter proposes that:

“The changes that digital technologies bring require us to develop a new level of participation for a competitive digital knowledge economy and a modern democratic and fair 21st Century society”.

‘Participation’ suggests more than mere interest: it suggests a sharing of responsibilities in working towards a common goal. This, I think, is missing from much of the work that I see in the Digital Engagement field.

One tool I know of does go some way towards this, by encouraging more thorough investigation of an issue. Help Me Investigate enables people to pose a question - such as ‘Does the Job Centre check out employers when it advertises vacancies? - and collaborate to find the answer. The process helps to expose the intricacies of policies and the nature of things as being anything but straightforward or black and white. Although it doesn’t explicitly strive to highlight responsibilities of everyone rather than just the targets of investigations, Help Me Investigate does encourage critical analysis and collaboration in a way that many of the other tools don’t.

This is an area that I believe the Citizenship Foundation is well qualified to input to, and I shall be working a little to put the issue of critical reflection more visibly onto the government’s Digital Engagement agenda.

Climate Change Project Successful with the EU

Ruxi — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 04:09:43 -0700

Citizenship Foundation has been informed on Friday, 14 August that the European Commission accepted to fund a large scale development education project we are a partner in. The other organisations involved are: Plan UK (lead partner), Partners Bulgaria, Plan Netherlands and other three Plan offices in Africa: Senegal, Kenya and Malawi.

The project will focus on raising awareness on climate change issues by linking schools in all the countries invovled via a website platform. The students will learn from a series of resources on climate change, developed by Plan UK and updated by the Citizenship Foundation and will also receive training on running active citizenship campaigns (based on Citizenship Foundation’s Youth Act model) in their countries. The proejct is to start in January 2010 and will run for three years. Citizenship Foundation will employ a project officer to work on recruiting schools in the UK and supporting the teachers throughout the project.

These are exciting times for the development of international work at Citizenship Foundation! Watch this space for more updates!

Community gardening in Kings Cross

Michael Grimes — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 03:48:12 -0700

Last Friday a number of us from the Citizenship Foundation spent the morning sanding and varnishing at the Calthorpe Project, a community garden in London’s King’s Cross.

Few local residents have access to gardens, so the Calthorpe Project gives them somewhere to sit peacefully and the opportunity to grow flowers and vergetables. The project also runs events, such as summer activities for local children, and is open for anyone to visit. (More about the garden in this interview with Adam from the project.)

The Project is 25 this year, and on Saturday 26 September is holding a carnival to celebrate. Proceedings start at midday with a procession around the local streets, and will be opened officially at 2pm by the Mayor of Camden from 1984. The event will include music, dance workshops, arts and crafts and international food. For more information contact Calthorpe Project, 258-274 Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8LH; tel: 020 7837 8019; www.calthorpeproject.org.uk.

Twitter strategy and policy

Michael Grimes — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:55:29 -0700

I have been developing a draft Twitter strategy and policy, based on Neil Williams’ draft strategy for government departments.

Although a long way from finished, I am releasing a very early draft now because Neil’s has received prominent media attention.

My version is already substantially different from Neil’s, and I still have a long way to go. There’s a lot that I want to rearrange, re-work or cut completely; it does not constitute the Citizenship Foundation’s strategy for using Twitter.

My main reason for releasing it now is that there are some inaccuracies in the original, particularly in regard to replies and direct messages, which are in danger of informing government strategies.

But hats off to Neil, for doing a superb job producing a draft from which people like me could work.

Download the latest version of my Draft Twitter Strategy.

Updates

29 July, 13:30: File replaced with version 2. It should be read as three related but independent documents: ‘Strategy’, ‘Policy’ and ‘Appendices’.
28 July, 09:28: the draft strategy document will periodically be replaced with newer versions while it’s under development.

Feedback

This is feedback that I have already given for Neil’s document, reproduced here in case it’s useful.

Not sure I agree that having a Twitter account renders web feeds (eg RSS, Atom) redundant. Twitter is immediate and pretty ephemeral: I might stumble across something on Twitter but I’ll track it using a feed reader.
A strict clearance procedure can be counter-productive as it can severely undermine the immediate and conversational nature of Twitter. Not easy to avoid in the public sector I imagine, but my take on it is to delegate oversight responsibility down to line managers.
I don’t think it’s possible to have an ‘organisational voice’ in a conversation. An organisation as an entity does not have an individual, informal, human voice: it is the collective voices of the staff (on behalf of the organisation) that engage in discussion, not the organisation itself. Therefore I don’t agree that a corporate account should be anonymous: it should be clear who the person behind it is. I’m waiting with interest for ConnectTweet, as I think it may solve a lot of issues.
Having a high following/followers ratio is generally seen as a good thing, not a bad thing, by reputation grading services.
@replies no longer work like that: people will only see your reply if they are following both you and the person you’re replying too (explained on Twitter and reported on Mashable)
You don’t need to be following someone to send them a DM, only they need to be following you (DMs explained by Twitter)
I don’t think ‘friends’ and ‘following’ are different. As I understand it ‘friends’ was replaced by ‘following’ as a clarification (‘What is Following’? (Twitter Help))

It’s all give, give, give….

shez — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 04:26:29 -0700

Working on Go-Givers, I’ve seen time and time again, that given the right tools, many children will give up their time or money for a good cause, - and I’m sure that my friends over in G Nation will attest to the same thing. So, I was interested to read research published by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) on the charitable thoughts and habits of children and young people.

This week, Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) published their research in conjunction with FIVE News- in the run up to their ‘Britain’s Kindest Kid’ competition. Some of CAF’s findings reflect the trends highlighted by the Citizenship Foundation’s Giving Nation research - Cancer Research, RSPCA and Children in Need coming out as popular benefactors in both cases, for example. More surprisingly, CAF’s research tells us that 27% of young people had given money to charity in the past 6 months, a low figure when compared with the 55% cited by G Nation’s 2007 research.

After reading the CAF figures, what struck me, is that 75% of the children surveyed would like to give more to charity. Furthermore, 85% believe that charities need to do more to get children interested in their work. So, how to bridge that gap? Well, schools taking part in the Giving Nation Challenge seem to have done a pretty good job of it - in the 08-09 academic year, groups of young people in schools across the UK worked together to raise £295,123.86 for charities of their choosing. On top of that, kids in London primary schools were busy with the Make a Difference Challenge - fundraising was a focus for some, whereas others decided that petitioning or awareness-raising were more appropriate ways to support their chosen cause.

Beyond just fundraising, kids taking part in these programmes feel a real sense of achievement. A 9 year old working on a local regeneration project recently told me “I am proud of what we are doing. I hope there will be change” adding that “Helping society is fun!”.

Beginners’ guide to web accessibility

Michael Grimes — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:32:43 -0700

Web accessibility can be an inexact science, and another unwelcome addition to work pressures for those who are not directly responsible for websites. But if we are to encourage and enable civic engagement, we must be as inclusive as possible: and that means being as accessible as possible.

A few months ago my friend Andy Mabbett gave a talk on basic web accessibility, tailored for people who create content rather than those who actually build websites. I transcribed it for him, and he has kindly let me publish it here in full.

Transcript of Andy Mabbett’s talk on basic web accessibly

Andy Mabbett is web manager for a large local authority. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or write to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

I can now take you through, point by point, the new WCAG 2 guidelines, explaining in detail what each one means. Hands up everybody who wants me to do that? Good, nobody. Right, hands up everybody who manages or creates – in terms of writing HTML – websites for a living.

Right, if you don’t understand accessibility – and if you don’t already do accessibility now – please leave the building, leave the country and leave the planet. Because if you’re doing that work professionally and you don’t already get accessibility, you’re in the wrong job. You’ve had fifteen or more years to get used to this: it’s time now that you knew what you were doing.

Today’s talk is for the rest of you: right? The people who use websites, put content onto websites, without having to know all the geeky stuff about what html tags are and labels for forms and all that sort of thing. The people who provide those tools should be making that work for you.

I’m going to try and illustrate some of the pitfalls of what you do on websites, or what you may be doing on websites, and how it may affect people in terms of the accessibility of your site.

Now most people think about accessibility – blind people using text readers. That’s a major issue in terms of accessibility but it’s not the only one. It’s about old people who have – as we all if we live long enough – a reduction in the ability to use ours senses or physical movement; it’s about people with physical disabilities, it’s about people who can’t use a mouse because they’ve knackered their wrist playing on the computers all the time, and have to use the keyboard or some other device; it’s about people with learning disabilities, it’s about people with hearing difficulties; you name it, it’s anybody who has some sort of difficulty. And if you make a website accessible for them, you’ll make it more usable for all your users.

Ok, that’s the preamble; here comes the talk.

I’m afraid this talk, to illustrate this point, isn’t very accessible.

[Low voice] The first thing I want to say is that you’re going to find it very hard to hear me; [raises voice] okay? So you didn’t hear that, did you?

There’s an analogy there: I was speaking in a very small font (it was probably Comic Sans). If you write in a small font, then people will not be able to read it if they’ve got poor eyesight; it stands to reason.

Now yes, there are tools in their browsers that can make the font bigger again; but they’ve already got the font on their browser set to the size that they need it at for a 100 percent text. If you make your text 90 percent in a footnote they can probably cope with that; but if you have some artistic design on your page and you design your pages to work at 80 percent – or 60 percent – then they’re going to have to use those tools to magnify the page to read your pages and then switch them back to read everybody else’s, and you’re putting barriers in their way.

So please, keep your font sizes reasonable and – if it’s within your control – make it possible for them to resize text.

Now I’m going to talk about one of three different things, and I want you to tell me which one you’d rather I talk about. Would you like me to talk about ‘here’, ‘here’, or ‘here’?

If you have links on your website that say ‘click here’ – ‘to read more about sport, click here’; ‘to read more about chocolate, click here’; to read more about music, click here’ – and all that links is the bit that says ‘click here’, or ‘here’, or something non-meaningful like that - then people using certain assistive technology have all the links separate to the rest of the page read out to them. So they can say ‘read all the links on the page out to me so I can see what to link to’. Then all they might hear is ‘here’, ‘here’, ‘here’: it’s meaningless.

Make your link text meaningful, standalone and unique on the page; so never have ‘more news’ twice if it links to two different pages. Each link – the actual link text – needs to be unique.

Now the next thing is, I want you to tell me which sentence in the previous illustration I gave was green. Come on, you all heard it; which bit of it was written in green ink? You don’t know, do you?

If you write a page on your website or on your blog and you say ‘all the things I like are in green and all the things I don’t like are in red’, then somebody who is blind and having that page read to them by their assistive software – or someone who is red-green colourblind, which is the commonest for of colourblindness; or somebody who’s looking at a black and white printout of that page; or somebody who’s looking at it on a monochrome mobile browsing device such is an early generation internet-aware mobile phone – can’t see that colour.

Never use colour as the only distinguisher for choices on your web pages or in your blogs. Always have ‘the things I like are in green and have an asterisk next to them; the things I don’t like are in red and have a hash symbol next to them’, or something like that. So there is a visual indicator that doesn’t rely on colour and there’s an indicator which can be read out, and the easy way to think about that if you’re not familiar with assistive technologies that read web pages, is imagining you’ve got to read that page over a telephone to a friend.

Which of the sentences in the previous explanation was on the left? And which was on the right hand side of the page that I was reading from? No, you can’t tell me!

Geo-spacial positioning of the content on your page is meaningless to a blind person. It is meaningless to someone who is reading your RSS feed.

If you look on my blog and do a search back you’ll find a post from about a year ago where somebody said ‘the icon on the right is our new logo’, and it was actually on the left in Google Reader; because Google Reader linearised the page and put the icon top-left.

Never refer to things on the right or left. Never put images side by side, and say ‘the image on the left is better than the image on the right’ or whatever; say ‘the first’ or ‘the second’ image, or label them ‘image a’ and ‘image b’: and that way the position of those images doesn’t matter because there is no position when the page is read out.

When you’re learning to code html [interruption from someone singing loudly], when you’re learning [more interruption], when you’re learning to [yet more interruption]; you can stop now John.

We’ve all been in the situation when you load a web page and it starts playing music to you. And if you’re trying to watch television at the time, or listen to music, that’s annoying. If you’re in an office full of people and it’s a page you shouldn’t be looking at at work it could be very embarrassing (so I’m told). If you’re a blind person who’s having that page read to you by assistive technology it stops you accessing that page; it stops you knowing what’s on that page. So never play music or other sounds on your pages, unless the user says ‘play it now’ by hitting a ‘play’ button or a ’start’ button. Please.

Okay. Now I’m going to tell you the real secret of getting web design right. It’s [long pause]. Okay? You all got that? I’m sorry, that bit of the talk was in Javascript and all of your ears have got Javascript disabled.

The number of times I visit web pages - I have Javascript disabled in my browser for technical reasons to do with my work - and I have to activate it in order to read what’s on the page.

Don’t use Javascript for important content; use Javascript to do the fancy posh bits around the outside. But your basic content should be available to users who have no Javascript capability: because their mobile device might not do it; because their PC might not be able to do it because it’s an old one; because their employer might block Javascript at the company firewall. Or because they might be the most important user that you’ve got of all, which is Google; which doesn’t parse Javascript to see the content of your pages.

So that’s an important lesson for your benefit as well as the benefit of your users.

One of the things you also need to think about with HTML design is to make sure your QRPs and your PTZs aren’t conflicting with your KLMs.

Or if you are going to use long acronyms such as I’ve just done, you’re going to have to make sure that they’re explained to your users. Don’t assume – unless you’re talking to a very specific audience – that they know what they mean; and if you are able to use the proper abbreviation element in html, to expand those abbreviations and acronyms.

Finally, I’m going to talk about the ‘alt’ text on images. Now I hope you all know what that is; I hope we’ve got past the stage where I have to explain that. I hope nobody in here has ‘alt’ text on their images that says ‘image’ or ‘f437.jpg’ or anything like that: if you do, go to the back of the class.

I’m going to close with an illustration of ‘alt’ text on two images; this is a real example which one of my friends found on a web page about a holiday site. The first image had a picture of a local animal; the second one had a picture of some people enjoying one of the activities that you could do at this holiday site.

Now the way to understand whether your ‘alt’ text is working - as with the examples I used earlier - is to imagine reading it over the phone. Because that’s what assistive technology does: it reads the page out and it reads the ‘alt’ text inline, as though it was part of the text of the page.

And this holiday site’s website had a picture of an animal followed by a picture of a holiday activity. And it said:

‘At Sunnyside Holiday Camp you can see a cow canoeing in the river’.

Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen.

Andy Mabbett , March 2009

Too hard to teach political literacy?

Nicola — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 07:27:52 -0700

This morning I attended the launch event of the Youth Citizenship Commission’s final report, no doubt lost in the press amongst the ‘jacko mania’ . The usual suspects were all there eager to hear the outcomes on effective participation and the engagement of young people in politics - with most of us wondering if they would back or oppose lowering the voting age (the latter being avoided with a resounding ’we aren’t sure either way’)

The key recommendation was for better and more effective training to improve the delivery of citizenship lessons - something which our lot here have been campaigning for, for years and which we are glad to see placed firmly at number one on the list of recommendations. A lot of schools do amazing things within the flexible format of the citizenship curriculum, but likewise a lot of schools struggle with how to make it relevant and interesting for their students.

The biggest focus of the morning for me however was a highlight on political literacy with the recognition that it is a massive challenge for teachers to teach despite it being a major component of the citizenship curriculum. One of the responses to this was a recommendation for parliament to fund and sponsor UK Youth Parliament.

Whilst I completely agree that UKYP do a fantastic job in helping young people understand political systems and processes, there are a number of organisations who also are extremely effective in delivering innovative and exciting programmes with a focus on political literacy. Youth Act, the Hansard Society, Envision, National Youth Parliament Competition, HeadsUp are a just a few of the many inspirational projects / orgs which develop young people’s political literacy both within and outside the classroom. What we need is for the relevant departments and the commission to support and endorse these programmes as a whole within the sector . In doing that, political literacy won’t be the neglected part of the citizenship curriculum, but instead will be the flagship component of it.

The evident rationality of altruism

Essi — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 04:26:25 -0700

I always enjoy it when the Economist publishes a feature called something like ‘why do people give?’ It appears to start from the principle that altruism is a behaviour so conspicuously irrational that its psychosocial determinants need to be unpacked – as if this irrationality could creep into something much more significant than philanthropy such as – er – the financial markets, perhaps. Fundraisers often play the same game at their professional conferences with seminars asking which people give and why – is it because they are from religious families? Is it for the gratitude that comes back to them from being seen as a giver? Is it for social networking or social justice?

My view is that asking why people give is a little like asking why people have babies in modern British society. Most people do not have children as an insurance policy for care in old age any more, and yet they spend thousands on clothes, holidays, bikes and ipods, which is surely as irrational as giving to charity if putting money into something which does not yield a return to the investor is always to be construed as irrational. An economist might quickly point out that we need young people and migrants to form the workforce to pay for our ageing population – but if you can find me a parent who had a child so that their tax contributions could pay for the care of the lady up the road, I’ll eat my hat. However, I can easily believe that a person might want a child just because they believe that they would love to have children, and also make a contribution to an Alzheimer’s charity because he or she would love people to be able to cope better with Alzheimers Disease.

I think that people give to charities because they see it as a means to make something happen that they would love to see in the world – such as vulnerable elderly people having better care, or children in developing countries being able to drink safer water. We know we cannot as individuals reach all the solutions by ourselves –the greatest talents in business, sports or entertainment have great teams working with them. So we form associations, and link with others by sharing our resources – emotional, intellectual, and financial – with associations we think will bring about the good thing we seek. Nothing so irrational about that, is there?

MPs may have behaved badly, but would we have behaved any better?

Michael Grimes — Fri, 15 May 2009 01:00:05 -0700

Recent revelations that British Members of Parliament have abused their expenses may seem pretty appalling. But maybe it’s society, and not simply the MPs, that needs a change of attitude.

On Tuesday Lord Foulkes challenged BBC presenter Carrie Gracie to reveal her salary. When she did, he lambasted her for daring to cross-examine him when her own salary of £92,000 is almost twice as much his.

It seems to me that he’s missed the point. Gracie replied that she uses her own phone rather than the BBC’s because she’s aware of spending public money. That may sound a little pathetic considering the size of her salary, but she’s right: surely it’s the attitude that’s the issue here, not the amount of money?

Lord Foulkes may be earning a lot less than Carrie Gracie, but he’s still earning a lot more than most people: and many of them would be considered well-paid. I work for a charity, which is funded in part by public money. I work from home, and I don’t claim for phone calls, electricity, or heating. Certainly I don’t expect other people not to claim for such expenses incurred in the performance of their job, but some moral integrity wouldn’t go amiss.

Which begs the question: would we be any different?

How many of those who have been so eager to criticise MPs’ use of expenses wouldn’t have done exactly the same given the chance? It would be interesting, for example, to see a freedom of information response on this from some members of the press.

If such a request did show a similarity of behaviour, the defence - I should imagine - would be that it isn’t public money that they’re spending. True, but if someone takes advantage of expenses in the private sector, they’re unlikely to change their spots if they then move to the public sector.

Isn’t it our attitude to money and to our behaviour in business and society that’s important? If we don’t see ourselves as having a duty to behave responsibly with others, and within the society and communities in which we operate, then why should anything change; MPs will always act selfishly - even if they do it within the rules - because that’s what people do?

Surely MPs are a product of society: so if society doesn’t change, neither will they.

Adapted from my post on citizensheep.com

What does empowerment mean in a representative democracy?

molly kearney — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:54:04 -0700

That sounds like a massive question, doesn’t it? Don’t read on if you expect me to answer it in this blog post – I’m merely aiming to think through the MPs’ expenses debacle and what questions recent events might raise for the Citizenship Foundation.

Over the past couple of days I’ve had conversations with Andy (Director of Participation and Social Action at the Foundation) and Tony (our Chief Exec) about whether or not the Foundation has something to say on the expenses scandal. Over various discussions we all agreed that, as an organisation, we believe that that this is a time for everyone to take ownership of our political system and that we hope teachers across the country are using the debate as an opportunity to tackle some difficult questions around trust and democratic representation with their students. Indeed, we’ve got lots to say on the subject, but I took the view that there probably wasn’t much point entering into the media scrum at the moment with a message that is positive and/or constructive. Defeatist as this might sound, I think it’s fair to say that a measured response would be considered positively boring, what with all the back-biting and political manoeuvring taking place on our TV screens and in our papers.

So we’re not going to stand up and shout about what’s going on. But that hasn’t stopped me – and I’m sure other colleagues – from thinking about the long-term impacts the scandal is going to have on public trust in politicians and our political institutions. I think this is a systemic problem, one that has arisen because Parliament has been allowed to create the very system that is supposed to regulate their behaviour. This is an obviously skewed arrangement; who knows how creative we all could be if we were allowed to write the tax policy, for instance, that applied to our own earnings? From the fear of anarchy implicit in such a proposition, it follows that it is right for public decisions regarding issues of self-interest to be handed up to our political representatives; this is a basic principle of our democratic arrangements. What puzzles me is that we don’t extend this logic to our representatives themselves.

As it stands now, an independent inquiry will look at the expenses system and make recommendations, which the Government and Parliament will either accept or reject. We, the public, are supposed to be cheered by the independence of the review. But I can’t be with final decision-making power still resting in the hands of the political establishment, rather than with – at least at some level – citizens.

And this is when I get to empowerment. What has struck me about this whole mess is how confined public anger towards and interest in MPs’ apparent abuse of the system is. Several representative groups have been polled to demonstrate the outrage. Media pundits talk at length about the electoral impacts, both at the European elections in June and the General Election in, presumably, 2010. But when it comes to the nitty-gritty – how to sort this out – the problems are for MPs themselves and not for us, as citizens, to think through.

All too often it seems to me that the ideal empowered citizen, from the point of view of the political establishment, operates on his or her own street, getting the council to fill a pot hole, or organising activities for local young people. I would never suggest that these activities aren’t important, but I wonder if they are all that we should aspire to.

Can we be empowered citizens if we are only able to call our representatives to account at elections? Can we be empowered citizens if our political institutions judge us too busy/uninterested/not clever enough to think through the checks and balances that should exist in Parliament? Is there really a problem with public trust in politicians and institutions – or is the real issue that we, as citizens, are not allowed the national, political space to trust ourselves?

Today I took part in a citizenship lesson: via Twitter

Michael Grimes — Wed, 06 May 2009 10:02:07 -0700

This morning I was invited to participate in a school’s year 10 Citizenship class: via Twitter. I’m not sure how well it worked, but it was an interesting experiment. Here I outline some of the challenges I think it presents as a model, which I’m keen to help iron out.

The lesson was on the topic of climate change, and the teacher had set up a Twitter account from which she tweeted questions on behalf of the class.

Because I wasn’t in the classroom I have no idea how the lesson progressed, which in turn made me feel somewhat isolated. That may not be a bad thing, although it was impossible to know how much commitment was required during the lesson (and, in fact, how long the lesson was to last).

Even though the external contributors like myself were few, the quality of replies was sometimes questionable. This is not a problem provided we were being treated the same as any other source, and not as experts.

I think the main stumbling block was actually the questions; they were too wide for us to answer with any authority, but appeared to expect us to.

These are not criticisms though. It was a bold experiment, and I hope it’s repeated. If it is, my suggestions would be:

be clearer at the outset of the topic in hand (ie I was told it would be on the citizenship aspects of sustainable development but the questions were about the effects of climate change);
perhaps, instead of asking questions that expect answers, actually conduct a discussion on a specific question; or invite questions to the class instead (which challenges them rather than offers them easy access to answers);
provide the external participants with some context; maybe via a live blog of the lesson, or pre-published notes.

I’m no teacher though, so any comments gratefully received. I think this was a great initiative, and hope the teacher in question will continue to explore it.

Be careful how you re-tweet: someone else’s integrity may be at stake

Michael Grimes — Fri, 01 May 2009 04:34:00 -0700

Re-tweeting is the act of forwarding a message on Twitter. But it can result in distorted messages being incorrectly attributed to people.

Accidentally altering meaning when forwarding messages is nothing new; so why is it different with Twitter?

Pitfalls of editing

Tweets (that is, messages on Twitter) have a maximum length of 140 characters. When a message is re-tweeted (ie re-published with the author attributed) the original author’s name and a prefix like ‘RT’ or ‘Retweet’ is added to the front of the message. This adds to the total number of characters, and often pushes it over the maximum 140 mark.

To get around this, people will truncate the original message to make it fit. This is fine if it’s edited well, but often the message gets paraphrased. Obviously there’s a danger here of changing the original meaning; this is exacerbated if the re-tweet is itself re-tweeted with new paraphrasing.

Let’s look at an example:

“@joswinson: recording an interview about the 100th anniversary of the suffragettes Parliamentary protest for BBC’s Record Review this weekend”

I’ve carefully removed two words (’an’ and ‘the’) to shorten the text without distorting the meaning:

“RT @joswinson: recording interview about 100th anniversary of the suffragettes Parliamentary protest for BBC’s Record Review this weekend”

But now I’ve paraphrased the original message, which may have completely changed its intended meaning:

“RT @joswinson: recording an interview this weekend about 100th anniversary of the suffragettes Parliamentary protest”

Did Jo mean the interview was at the weekend, or that the BBC programme was? And what was important to her: the fact that she was recording a programme about the suffragettes, or that it was for the BBC (a detail I removed)?

And now let’s re-tweet the re-tweet:

“RT @citizensheep: RT @joswinson: 100th anniversary of the suffragettes Parliamentary protest, this weekend”

Jo never said the anniversary was this weekend. That presumption was made by me when I edited the message for re-tweeting.

It’s like Chinese Whispers. Unfortunately it’s more dangerous: because - unlike Chinese Whispers - the message retains an attribution to the original author, but may have a completely different meaning to what that person had intended.

And it doesn’t end there.

Problems with adding comments

People often like to add their own comments, which may contain their own opinion. If it’s added before the message it’s clear enough:

“Actually, I think it endangers them. RT @citizensheep: I think the internet changes lives, but not so sure it necessarily improves them.”

But often it’s added to the end:

“RT @citizensheep: I think the internet changes lives, but not so sure it necessarily improves them. Actually, I think it endangers them.”

In the second message Citizensheep appears to be credited with an opinion he never actually voiced.

Dangers

Arguably Twitter also makes it easy to find problems and correct them. But the speed with which information spreads now means that the damage can be done before the problem is even noticed.

There are potential dangers here for organisations - such as charities and public bodies - who have to be careful about the message they’re projecting. We need to try and make sure our messages are unambiguous in the first place, and be quick to manage any misunderstanding or misinterpretation.

We also need to be very careful how we treat other people’s tweets. Mis-representing someone could have unwelcome consequences that undermine their integrity and damage their reputation.

Note

In the examples above, the original messages were real (reproduced with permission) but the edited versions are works of fiction. I chose to illustrate it this way to avoid upsetting anyone, but real examples are easy to find.

Confident speaking skills are crucial for a healthy society

Tony Breslin — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 08:00:33 -0700

At last the government is being told to teach people how to speak effectively. Without that skill, the integrity of civic society is undermined by a noisy minority.

In his report published today, Sir Jim Rose has called for a stronger focus on “formal language, including standard spoken English in the primary curriculum”. This is to be welcomed, and is long overdue.

As viewers of BBC Two’s The Speaker might have noted in recent weeks, the gains that come with being able to speak competently and confidently in public - and in a range of contexts - go far beyond “word poverty”. Participants came out with higher self-esteem, and able to engage more effectively both in the community and as consumers; both of which will make them more employable.

But these skills also enable the more effective use of important social devices: advocacy, negotiation, leadership.

Time and again, speaking in public comes close to the top of public fear surveys - right up there with concerns about health and well-being, family stability and financial security. How many people won’t take a lead in their residents’ association because they’re terrified of speaking in public? How many great engineers do not, for the same reason, rise to the leadership of their companies? How often does the “quiet” student go unnoticed in class because of a nervousness in “speaking out”? How many people are treated badly as consumers because they’re afraid to voice their complaints?

And, crucially, how many people would be more involved in civic and political life if they weren’t afraid of speaking in public?

People who readily voice their opinions are the ones who get heard. The more of us that feel able to speak up, the more that public spaces - be they classrooms or council chambers - are likely to be reclaimed from the noisy few.

The Citizenship Foundation, SpeakersBank and Speakers Trust are among those organisations currently working together to build support for a broader campaign on this issue: a National Campaign for Public Speaking.

Time for budgets based on a new kind of economics? ‘Citizen-economics’, perhaps?

Tony Breslin — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 02:04:50 -0700

Whatever our view of the result, both in the build-up to this month’s Budget and in the initial reactions, it seems to me that two themes (expressed pretty unanimously across both the centre-left and the centre-right) are dominant.

Frst, that public spending will need to be reigned in at some point in the not too distant future - even if this might not be the time for slash and burn and even if some of the immediate or eventual consequences are dire.

Second, that while there are various arguments for altering the distribution of the tax burden across socio-economic groups - as the furore over Darling’s 50p call on top-end earners confirms - increasing the net tax-take significantly beyond current levels is a risky political and economic option.

For me, though, there is a broader point: how do we manage our own ever-raising aspirations about what public services can reasonably deliver - when reducing public spending is an economic imperative and when further raising taxes is politically risky - even in areas where the broad cross-party consensus is that the state should invest on our behalf: in health, in education, in maintaining a viable and sustainable transport infrastructure, in child protection, in policing and so on - especially when these aspirations come, in large part, not from an engaged, participative citizenry but from an apparently politically disengaged mass of complainant consumers? “I want it all. I want it now!”

This was a question that I raised from the floor at a pre-Budget breakfast seminar just before the budget, staged by the emergent and increasingly name-checked centre-right think tank Reform at the UK headquarters of PA Consulting in Victoria. Vince Cable was the star speaker, alongside Reform Director Andrew Haldenby and Colm Reilly who heads-up the Government Practice at PA.

For me, Reilly had it right when he spoke about Budgets not just being financial instruments concerned with economic decision-making but statements of policy and priority with strong human, social and ethical dimensions and consequences.

Perhaps in this kind of analysis - the kind of ‘citizen-economics’ that we have been trying to get our heads around at the Citizenship Foundation - we might begin to understand that while we can’t have it all “right here, right now”, we might be able to begin to build a different kind of society, based on a different type of economics: just a little bit greener, engaged and sustainable; just a little bit less wasteful, costly and materialistic; more “get something, give something back” than “buy one, get one free”; shopping when we need to do so, not “until we drop”; as much about shared responsibilities as individual rights.

I could buy into this change of emphasis - even if higher taxes are a part of the deal - and I suspect others, across the political spectrum, could do so too.

New webmaster blog

Michael Grimes — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:01:13 -0700

I’ve set this blog up as a space to talk, think and generally mutter about our website. I’ve done so to free the main blog of stuff that isn’t quite so obviously ‘citizenship-related’.

This should also help me to write more often. I’m trying to encourage staff to blog, yet my own contributions have been few and far between. As my work is supporting projects not delivering them, the things I can think of to talk about sit awkwardly alongside posts by colleagues.

At the moment I’m using the same visual theme as the main blog, but when I’m able to get full ftp access again (grr) I’ll change it. So hopefully you won’t get too confused next time you come a-calling.

‘Forums’ becomes ‘Blogs’

Michael Grimes — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:00:18 -0700

The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed a subtle change to our website’s navigation bar: where it once read ‘forums’ it now reads ‘blogs’.

This change reflects a shift in our approach to engaging with visitors. The forums have always been very quiet, and we have never really found our feet with them. We will still use them, but for specific project-related purposes rather than general discussions.

Instead we aim to up our blogging game. Rather than trying to encourage what felt like arbitrary forum discussions, we will be actively voicing our thoughts and opinions to give readers something to get their teeth into. Whereas we have felt uncomfortable doing this in our news items, the blog has become the perfect place for views which may not always reflect those of the Citizenship Foundation.

I hope this subtle but significant shift in focus will help us to engage in more, richer, conversations with our visitors.

Citizenship Foundation/CEWC merging celebration

Ruxi — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 03:40:37 -0800

On Wednesday, the 26th of November 2008, we organised a cocktail reception celebrating the merger between the Citizenship Foundation and CEWC. Both friends and staff of Citizenship Foundation and friends of CEWC attended this event which had an ‘atmosphere of celebration and excitement about future collaboration’.

This was a fantastic opportunity for those involved in both Citizenship Foundation and CEWC to come together and learn more about each other and create links for the future. We hope that all those who attended had a good time and we look forward to the development of our international work.

The event was very generously hosted by the Commonwealth Foundation in Central London.

Young Ideas for Europe International Project

Ruxi — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 07:32:02 -0800

From September to November 2008 Citizenship Foundation hosted an international project called ‘Young Ideas for Europe’. The project, funded by Robert Bosch Stiftung and supported by NEF (Network of European Foundations) aimed to create a space for young people from different countries to meet and discuss about political topics in a European context.

Therefore, 12 students from Skinners’ Company’s School for Girls in Hackney participated in this project where they explored Family-Friendly Policies in the EU, during a series of workshops in their school. Three schools in Germany took part in the project at the same time.

November 14th 2008 was the last day of a series of workshops where students from Skinners’ participated in a role game where they played the roles of different political parties and they each presented their manifesto for Family-Friendly policies in 2020. The day ended with everybody present voting on their preferred manifesto. The students were able to exchange the results with their German peers on the day.

The feedback from the students was very positive and we hope that the Citizenship Foundation will be able to be part of such initiatives in the future as well.

A big thank you goes to Angeline David and Rebecca Warren from Skinners’ Company’s School for Girls for taking the students through the workshops on Family-Friendly policies.

CEWC joins Citizenship Foundation

Les Sratton — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:45:05 -0700

CEWC colleagues are very pleased that the Council for Education in World Citizenship is becoming part of the Citizenship Foundation, and are being welcomed with open arms. I am sure that all colleagues will work to make a success of this new situation, which has great potential.

Les Stratton

Director, Council for Education in World Citizenship

The Future of the Council for Education in World Citizenship

Les Sratton — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:43:48 -0700

The Council for Education in World Citizenship (CEWC), since its foundation in 1939, has made major contributions to the citizenship debate, the education of individuals, and to the development of policy and institutions in the United Kingdom.

There is every reason to continue this work into the future; the need has not diminished. CEWC has however lacked any substantial core funding to support its mission since the British Government withdrew its grant in 1994. This led to a formal suspension of operations for the organisation from 2001 until 2003 when a legacy bequest from Margaret Quass, former Director of CEWC, permitted a resumption of activities, albeit on a more limited scale than previously.

Over the past five years much useful work has been accomplished including: Substantial citizenship educational programmes focusing on Human Rights, Corporate Responsibility, and Globalisation; Model United Nations General Assemblies; Instrumental support for the revival of the UNESCO Associated Schools Network in the UK; and the establishment of international partnerships and networks.

Whilst funding has been received to deliver some specific projects, CEWC, despite extensive canvassing, has not succeeded in attracting sufficient financial support for its central organisation and infrastructure costs, which have been met to date largely by drawing on its reserves. The current level of activity can only be sustained for a short period of time before the reserves are finally depleted.

CEWC Executive Board, after careful consideration, concluded that there is no realistic long-term prospect of CEWC continuing as an independent organisation. The purpose for which CEWC was established in 1939 has not lost its urgency or relevance, but new and sustainable means of achieving it had to be found. It was agreed that we should seek a collaborative arrangement with another organisation in the field which has similar purposes, and an extensive conversation has since taken place with the Citizenship Foundation, with whom CEWC shared offices in St Swithin’s Lane in the City a decade ago, and worked together to advise on the government’s Citizenship Curriculum.

The aims of the Citizenship Foundation are compatible with, and in many ways similar to, those of CEWC. It is also a substantial mature organisation with good infrastructure and governance. The Citizenship Foundation fortuitously is already seeking to widen its international remit and perspective, and CEWC would bring complementary reputation and experience. The Citizenship Foundation has welcomed the approach by CEWC, and has proposed to invite the appointment of a member of the CEWC Executive Board to their Board of Trustees, and to establish a joint advisory board to develop a future programme. The CEWC brand may well be used to promote appropriate activities in the future but that will be one of the various issues for the joint advisory board to consider.

The Executive Board is unanimously of the view that the best way forward available is for CEWC to be dissolved as an independent organisation and incorporated fully within the Citizenship Foundation. The proposed arrangement will be mutually beneficial to both CEWC and the Citizenship Foundation and will permit the continuity of the aspirations of the founders of CEWC and sustain its legacy.

I hope that you will wish to continue to be associated with, and support, the work of CEWC in this new context.

Professor David Miles, CEWC Chair

CEWC History

Les Sratton — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:41:22 -0700

The collapse of the League of Nations prompted the establishment of the Council for Education for World Citizenship in 1939 at the outbreak of World War II.

The Christmas Holiday Lectures at Central Hall Westminster were started in December 1944 with over two thousand sixth formers attending to listen to many speakers of note. CEWC became a thriving organisation with several thousand member schools in the UK. Schools from Belgium, France, Denmark, Netherlands, Italy and the USA attended conferences.

CEWC coordinated the UNESCO Associated Schools Project which now has about 8000 schools in 176 countries; the schools are encouraged to work on projects around themes such as human rights, peace, democracy, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue. It carried out UNESCO Co-action activities, where schools raised money for projects that UNESCO administered to help underdeveloped countries.

Model United Nations General Assemblies, where students research and debate on behalf of different countries, were an important activity. They emphasised that students needed to learn how to research, debate and take action rather than simply learn facts. This is in a similar tradition to Quality Circles. The Broadsheet with its junior version, other publications, an expanded speakers service, regional councils and conferences, seminars for teachers, and increasing partnership projects with other organisations enabled CEWC to have a voice at the highest levels. The UK government funded CEWC, and education ministers from all political parties were supportive.

Many people were influenced when students by CEWC’s activities. These include a current UK cabinet member and many past ones, some of whom are CEWC Vice-Presidents. It is difficult to even guess how many decisions have been influenced by CEWC’s message. CEWC and its members have helped the birth of many important organisations including Oxfam, Freedom from Hunger, Voluntary Service Overseas, Community Service Volunteers and the Association for Citizenship Teaching. CEWC was there at the first United Nations General Assembly in London. One of the major achievements of the United Nations was the creation of an international framework of law on Human Rights. Also in 1945 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) was formed, and again CEWC facilitated the birth.

CEWC Cymru and CEWC Northern Ireland are sister organisations. CEWC Cymru works directly with young people and teachers on global citizenship. It organises educational events for student and, provides training and resources for teachers. CEWC Cymru receives its core funding from the Welsh Assembly Government, local education authorities, and over 100 school and college members.

Through its programme of Active Global Citizenship Projects, CEWC Northern Ireland enabled young people from post-primary schools and youth groups to understand and confront global issues and challenges. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child underpinned its work.

Citizenship is now taught in the curriculum in the UK. Every year the subject’s strength and importance grows, and influences students to be more tolerant, socially active and aware of their rights. However, the global dimension tends to be neglected.

In 1985 the UK government under Margaret Thatcher withdrew from UNESCO membership, so ASPnet activities ceased in the UK. This was followed by the withdrawal of government funding for CEWC in 1994. This has not been re-instated. Nonetheless its Diamond Jubilee celebration in 1999 was a spectacular event that reflected the true worth of CEWC.

Valiant attempts were made to keep going by running educational projects, but without government funding it became necessary to reduce CEWC’s staff down to two unpaid volunteers. In 2001 activities were suspended for two years. Then CEWC received a legacy as a result of the death of former director Margaret Quass. A Phoenix meeting was held, and CEWC rose from the ashes. An office was opened in a school and a director was appointed, and activities started again, though not yet on the previous scale. Placement students were employed for three years, and now the office has moved to Kingston University.

A delegation went to the 10th International Convention of Schools Quality Control Circles at City Montessori School, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India in November 2007 and our first office outside the UK was opened.

Other recent activities, especially human rights activities, are described in other entries on this blog. CEWC is about to become part of the Citizenship Foundation, so it is appropriate to list some of our supporters and to thank them for all they have done.

Patron: H.R.H The Duke of Gloucester

President: John Gordon

Vice-presidents

TWF Allan John Lockett

Lord Archer of Sandwell PC QC Rabbi Julia Neuberger
Lord Attenborough CBE Professor James O’Connell

Charles Clarke MP John Raisman

John Colclough Lord John Roper
Lord Judd Anne Sofer

Vivian Kerr OBE Lord Steel of Aikwood PC

Baron Neil Kinnock PC Professor Bill Wallace

Susan Kramer MP Baroness Williams of Crosby PC

Chair: Professor David Miles

Vice-Chair: John Waddleton

Executive Board:
Urszula Basini Kanbar Hosseinbor
Natasha Eggett Jude Smith Rachele
Professor Richard Ennals Professor Mary Stuart
Michael Freeston Christopher Wyld

Corporate responsibility is human rights

globalcitizenship — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 -0800

Human Rights Broadsheet 4

29th January 2008

Corporate Responsibility is Human Rights - making the human link

This seminar drew together the strands of the first three seminars held in October, November and December 2007. Hilary Hunt, Visiting Fellow at the Kingston University Business School, summarised the first seminars. Seminar 1 covered sustainable communities, and the relationships between them, business and government. Seminar 2 was about the rights and well being of children, and seminar 3 explored the role of human rights education for world citizenship.

Dr Helen Johnson of Kingston University School of Education led the lively discussion, commenting that we had been analytical rather than descriptive in our approach. The participants included students from the Law School and representatives of the student’s union and CEWC. Many were from the Penrhyn Road campus (the seminar took place at Kingston Hill). One of the participants had been drawn to study law because of human rights. Another was an alumnus who worked in the corporate responsibility field.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 had an increasing momentum for good as time passed. It is not an imposition of Western values, but has been agreed by all nations. Justice is not a Western idea - the Hammurabi Code, over 3700 years old, was cited. It was noted that violence has lasting effects, e.g. Edward the First’s brutal conquest of Wales and invasion of Scotland around 1300 AD had an influence on the current relationships between British nations.

Businesses tend to want to project an image of compliance rather than implementing rights. Government often does what business wants, and neither do what the citizen wants. But what is the motivation for change while the rights of shareholders take precedence? Companies do have to obey corporate law. The state tries to decide everything for its citizens. Human rights should be a protection for the citizen against oppressive and controlling governments. Should responsibilities be given back to the citizen?

Students are not apathetic, neither are citizens, but they need to feel they will have influence or it is not worth the effort of being involved. Students have time to talk and are passionate about issues, and many of them participate in volunteering. But when students start work they leave these values behind. Why is this?

The UK and USA regard human rights as an imposition. Many countries are distanced from us because of our violations of international law (the next seminar is “The Enforcement of International Human Rights Law: the Challenges Ahead”. It is on 25th February 2008, 1600 to 1800h, Room 6032, Frank Lampl Building, Kingston Hill Campus and will be led by Paresh Kathrani of Kingston University Law School and Prof Richard Ennals of Kingston Business School).

Organisations should imbed human rights values. The education of professionals at Kingston (business, law, teaching etc,) should ensure that those professionals will act more in line with human rights than at present. Everyone has a role to play in society - engineers, businessmen and so on have an important role, they should be made aware by spreading the word about human rights and publicising events. We are all responsible and we all have rights.

All the participants had heard about the Convention on the Rights of the Child but only young people from other countries had learned about it through childhood education. In Sierra Leone it was a standard part of education. Others had learnt from parents involved in UNICEF or who had been aware of human rights violations in Chile. Another had learnt it when studying law in Russia. UK students had learnt about it from friends or through choosing to study human rights.

The university chaplain Stan Brown is collating a document for Bill Rammell the government minister - students should contribute. The government seems not to know how to address the social conflicts in the UK. Locking people up for 42 days without charge is not the way forward. There should be a voice for children in the UK as there is in Sierra Leone.

Privacy rights are violated in the USA. The prevalence of CCTV adds to the climate of fear in the UK. Announcements on trains such as “please keep your luggage in sight - there is a potential threat” do not help. Tee shirts such as “don’t freak I’m a Sikh” use humour in an attempt to overcome fear. The government talks about tolerance, but this is not the same as acceptance. Being pragmatic, tolerance is a start; people have feelings towards different communities which take time to work through. KU is much more diverse now. Over a hundred languages are spoken.

While religions hold that they know the revealed truth, it takes tolerance to interact in the community. The Islamic and Jewish societies issued a joint statement last year. KU has put measures in place to educate its community to be more tolerant; there generally seems to be good communication between students of different cultures and beliefs. One exception is the conflict between the Turkish and Greek societies.

The curriculum has been over specified - there is not enough space left for education to take place. Students have an opportunity to knock on open doors. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be part of students’ induction, and should be the backcloth against which all our work is conducted. If the Students Union endorses it then funds can be found.

One should be self critical and realise where we are having a negative impact. Despite the Race Relations Act there is still institutional racism. Can KU look at itself? Things bubble up that are not spoken of and stop realisation of full potential. We are all learning. Integration and learning from each other rather than coexisting requires self examination.

Helen asked “What will this group do? What will get you to come to the next seminar? Participants said that communications and leaflets are needed. Facebook groups should be set up (Facebook is OK but CCTV is not?!). We should focus on what people need to aware of in respect of their own rights. We can ask people what their role as a citizen of the world is by being e.g. an engineer. We need to understand why human rights affects us, and how will our future need to reflect the human rights agenda. Human rights should be introduced into the curriculum and be part of personal development plans. UN days should be celebrated. We should wear the tee shirt.

New Executive Board member

globalcitizenship — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 -0800

Jude Rachele Smith, CEO of Abundant Sun, has agreed to join the CEWC Executive Board. Jude is a Corporate Social Responsibility consultant to many well known business and legal companies.

Latvia

globalcitizenship — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 -0800

Les attending the training conference for ASPnet coordinators in Latvia