Citizenship Foundation blog posts

David Blunkett interview transcript: the government’s plan for citizenship education is ‘very bad news’

Citizenship Foundation Voices — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:47:02 +0000

The UK government plans to reduce the importance of citizenship education in schools. On Tuesday I asked former Education Secretary about his concerns for a demoted citizenship curriculum.

What follows is a full transcript of the interview, accompanied by videos of each question.

Removing the national standards for teaching citizenship

Ten years ago - as Education Secretary - you succeeded in getting citizenship education onto the secondary curriculum as a statutory subject. The current government is proposing that there should no longer be a national standard for citizenship in schools. How do you feel about that?

“Well I’m both disappointed and extremely worried. Along with information technology and design & technology, the idea is that citizenship will float about somewhere within the school but will not only not be part of the core curriculum but will not have determined outcomes at national level.

“[It] will not have a national programme of study and therefore all that goes with it in terms of best practice.

“And of course a downgrading in relation to funding of teacher training.

“So the package that is on the table at the moment is really very bad news.”

Impact on democracy

Relegating the citizenship curriculum to the Basic Curriculum: what impact will that have on democracy?

“Well we knew, before I established the citizenship and democracy curriculum - after the working party chaired by Professor Sir Bernard Crick - that we had at that time, back in the ’80s and ’90s, the least politically literate electorate in he developed world. The work that was done at York University demonstrated that.

“The recent work from the National Foundation for Educational Research has demonstrated not only that the citizenship programmes already increase the awareness, the political understanding, but also the participation of young people; including in the 2010 election the 19 and 20 year-olds voted substantially more than the age group just above them.

“And I think that demonstrates that it’s already had an impact. But - crucially - that it’s also increased the active participation of youngsters in terms of volunteering; it’s had an impact on the quality of of outcomes in other study areas - in other words, the engagement of young people with the community and with an understanding of society around them - has actually had an impact on other subject areas.

“And it’s no good saying that, well, we can teach it through history or geography: subject teachers in those areas are specialists within their own field; what they don’t have - what many teachers never had - was an understanding of the political arena, the legal arena and the economic arena, or the ability to be able to teach it.

“And a combination of the withdrawal of the backup from national level of best practice - and of the kind of materials that make it possible to do the job well, and of outcome measures - would simply leave citizenship literally floating in the air.”

Teach all ages

We’re talking at the moment about the secondary curriculum. Would you go as far as to say actually it should be even earlier than that? I know the government maybe would say that the National Citizen Service would cover some of that, but would you that actually citizenship ought to be there right from the start?

“Well I think there are four steps. I think that at primary level youngsters really do need to understand what’s happening around them. They do need to start appreciating their role in the community; not heavily, not prescriptive, not actually boring tuition in a way that would turn them off, but just an understanding of how decisions are made: the interaction within their own family and the wider community, decisions in the school, responsibility, understanding of other people’s points of view; literally the way in which we learn to rub along together, to make decisions, to be appreciative that sometimes we have to give a little.

“And then move on to the secondary curriculum, where it’s really important that there is a proper programme of study, that there are powerful bodies of knowledge that we need to draw down on, that we do have social values that we need to transmit and to ensure that people understand together; because that develops a common identity, develops a common sense of belonging, and therefore it avoids the syndrome of people feeling alienated and separated out, which we saw regrettably in August 2011 in the disturbances.

“And then we move on to the National Citizen Service, where people get a taster of commitment and volunteering and work around them.

“And finally that we encourage young people to become volunteers at times in their life. I’m in favour of a full-time volunteer programme sometime between 16 and 25, where young people would have six to nine months of literally giving and receiving by being part of a volunteer programme, but above all that people learn that the more they participate - the more they give, the more they’re part of a vibrant democracy - the more they’ll get out of it and the more influence they’ll have over what’s happening to their lives.”

Delivery over structure?

Simon Hughes - Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats - told me, and I’ll quote this: “I’ve never thought the fact that something is compulsory as opposed to not compulsory, or dictated nationally as opposed to delivered locally, is the thing that makes the difference. It’s actually the delivery that matters more than the structure”. What would you say to that?

“I think it is the delivery that matters more than the structure, but if it’s not taught at all then there’s no delivery.

And we knew before 1998, when we embarked on this programme originally, that unless you actually said to schools ‘This is something on which you will be judged, this is something on which there will be defined outcome measures,’ they didn’t do it.

“A handful of schools in the state sector took it really seriously. Paradoxically, in the private sector they really did teach the young people - that they saw as the leaders “of the future - about politics, about the law, about economics; because they expected that not only would they participate but they would lead.

“I want leaders from my community; I want leaders from my schools; I want young people to believe that they will be Prime Minister; and despite what’s happened over the last two hundred years, and despite the efforts that, we put in to persuade people that teaching this openly and effectively and interestingly in schools, we’re still revolving back to a Cabinet dominated by people who went to public school.”

What should Labour do?

So then what should Labour do? When I spoke to Stephen Twigg he strongly supported citizenship education, but he did not go as saying that the government should keep its national statutory curriculum; that is, with a programme of study and assessment criteria. So what promises would you like to hear from the Shadow Education Secretary?

“Well I’d like an imaginative approach from the opposition, from my own party, which says: ‘Look, by 2014 the majority of secondary schools will be academies, the National Curriculum is therefore not directly applicable, we will have a silly situation where we pretend we have a national curriculum but we’ve effectively disemboweled it it and great parts of it will no longer be required and other parts will not be applicable to schools that have become Academies or Free Schools’.

“So what I’d like to see is that there is a requirement on schools - as there would be for English, maths, science, geography, history - to actually have a particular period in which they are expected to teach citizenship and that Ofsted would have an obligation to inspect. And a schools would find itself judged just as much by whether it’s teaching citizenship and whether it’s teaching it effectively as they would from those subject areas that Michael Gove is committed and minded to make part of the core curriculum.

“So we’d have a common-sense approach right across the board; there’s no point in having a core curriculum and a secondary curriculum if most of your schools don’t have to follow the curriculum. They’d certainly have to follow outcomes in terms of what was expected of them in terms of inspection and the way in which the school was judged, and there would be a national framework which schools could draw down on so that the most up-to-date materials and lesson plans could be shared so that teacher training was undertaken on an effective basis, rather than believing that somehow somewhere another subject teacher with a particular specialism can maybe for a small part of every week suddenly become the citizenship teacher: it just doesn’t work that way.

“And I am a trained teacher, I did a post-graduate certificate; as well as being Education Secretary I did teach: I understand very well what happens if you don’t require that there is at least some outcome measure and that outcome measure is measured.”

Can we expect that then? If the current government takes citizenship off the national curriculum, will the next Labour government put it back on?

“Well I shall press very hard that the next Labour government provides for citizenship teaching the same requirements that it provides for other key subject areas ranging from English and maths through science, geography and history.

“In other words: that there is an expected outcome, that there is a measurable progress that has to be made, that there is proper investment in training and that we do ensure that materials, lesson plans and the best that’s on offer is made available in a way that encourages schools to use it.”

See more views of the citizenship curriculum on YouTube, including MPs Stephen Twigg and Simon Hughes.

UK GovCamp 2012: Public service delivery, digital tools and the voluntary sector

Citizenship Foundation Voices — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:11:42 +0000

In one of the UK GovCamp sessions last week we discussed the use of digital tools and third sector organisations in public service delivery.

I recorded most of the session. At some point I will try to write it up, but for now you can listen to the audio and read the transcript.

The transcript is mainly intact, but occasionally I was unable to make sense of a word or two. Therefore it’s in a wiki so that you can correct my errors if you so wish.

I was a little slow to start the recording, so it joins the discussion as we address the issues of voluntary groups taking on some aspects of public services. The transcript begins as someone from the police is explaining how they worked with a group of Street Pastors.

Cross-posted from citizensheep.com

If knowledge is power then democracy needs common knowledge

Citizenship Foundation Voices — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:53:53 +0000

Tomorrow we launch the latest research into the impact of citizenship education. It looks at the understanding and behaviour of those who were the first to receive Citizenship from age 11. It was taken after they had been able to vote for the first time, at the General Election of 2010.

The launch will be in the House of Commons and all MPs and Lords are invited.

It comes at a timely point after the Curriculum Review published on 20th Decemebr 2011 recommended a change in the status of citizenship education.

The Review created two new categories within the statutory curriculum: both intended to free up teachers’ discretion around their subject delivery. They move the choice of course content into the hands of teachers within each school.

The top tier of content-defined curriculum will still be called the ‘National Curriculum’, and the next two, more localised tiers will be the Basic Curriculum and the Local Curriculum. So Citizenship remains in the statutory curriculum, but is in the latter two categories.

The government will prescribe the content of the National Curriculum (not the Basic or Local) under its traditional Programmes of Study which define what all students should know. This time the skills that students should develop will not be included as educational outcomes. The revised curriculum is conceived around knowledge.

The distinction is never that simple of course.

For example: knowledge for citizenship would be different to knowledge about citizenship. Knowledge about the conclusions that our society has drawn from history would be different to knowledge about things that have happened. Knowledge relating to human geography is very different from countries and climates…

It is an unenviable task to sort all that out and I would happily credit Michael Gove with having both the intellect and dynamism to take on that battle: more than most Education Secretaries of our time.

We have a fundamental gripe though.

We think that there really is an omission here. It has come in deciding that Citizenship has no core knowledge that every member of the next generation needs to have: what the Review has called ‘socially valuable’ or ‘powerful knowledge’. Knowledge that unlocks doors and perspective for other knowledge and that facilitates development of the intellect, of understanding and of capabilities. Basically for citizenship: contextualising knowledge you won’t get anywhere else.

The research backs this up – not necessarily by showing how refined the most civically active can become – but by illustrating how far on the outside some can be left.

Every morning I walk past one of the anti-capitalism camps in the City of London, and at night I often tune into TV shows talking about the limits of capitalism. This weekend’s BBC News featured an article about the Occupy movement being invited to talk to citizenship classes in a school near where I live. These are live issues relating to the need to transform the system in a country that is rapidly choosing neither capitalism nor socialism.

What will it choose and how will we choose?

Young people need fundamental knowledge here. They have to grasp how two ecosystems work. The two that they are being handed as a debt burden from the previous generation. Two very complex and intertwined ecosystems. The first is the global economy and the second is the global climate.

But the choices that they will face will not be technical. They will be social. Everyday life-choices that will see some join the next equivalent of the English Defence League and others downgrade their lifestyle or demand restraint on others’ freedoms. Choices that will set citizen against citizen and demand of us a refined capability to manage the argument in a potentially more divided nation.

It is hard to believe that such life choices should not be part of education. No offence to History, but surely more important than Geronimo and the colonisation of the American West (illustrative though they may be).

We’re not holding out for Citizenship as the only subject that one could possibly use to teach such issues – but to say that it isn’t something everyone in the next generation needn’t have a grasp of, and isn’t fundamentally powerful knowledge… well, no offence to RE: but it beggars belief.

Lawyer Charlotte Doerr, of McDermot Will & Emery, faces a class of school pupils for the first time

Citizenship Foundation Voices — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:50:18 +0000

Charlotte Doer is a lawyer at McDermot Will & Emery. The firm joined the Lawyers in Schools programme for the first time this year and is working with London Nautical School in Lambeth.

As a lawyer, you get used to sitting in rooms and talking and negotiating with adults, so I was not sure how my skills would translate to a group of 14-15 year old secondary school students. Also, I was not completely able to rid myself of thoughts of the “youth stereotype” and I wondered how responsive a group of school students would be to learning and discussing the law. As it turns out, I was instantly impressed.

Our first activity was to discuss the minimum age for certain activities and I was astounded when one of the boys launched into an explanation of why he thought the minimum age for voting in local elections should be 16 as he thought that it would give students of that age a chance to begin to get involved in politics and ready themselves for national elections, and it would also reflect the fact that a lot of local government programmes and schemes impact directly on students of his age. I was struck by the student’s thoughtful consideration of the subject, and immediately felt excited about what was to come. I was not disappointed. The 50 minutes or so was taken up with each of the students contributing whole heartedly to the discussion. Even those students that had appeared a little apprehensive to begin with spoke out when an issue important to them was raised.

Although the students were lively they were also respectful of each other and I did not have to reprimand any student for talking over another. I was particularly impressed by students applying what we had been discussing to real world situations. I had started the session with some trepidation but I ended it with a sense of excitement about what the remaining sessions would hold. I’m grateful for programmes like Lawyers in Schools which recognise how crucial it is for today’s students to understand and engage with fundamental civic and legal issues.

National Curriculum Review revised timeline

Citizenship Foundation Voices — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:34:02 +0000

Before Christmas the government changed the timetable for its Curriculum Review.

This time though it’s in a number of wordy paragraphs rather than a clear table, so I’ve taken the liberty of simplifying it.

December 2011: Ministers were recommended the subjects that should have Programmes of Study (other than English, mathematics, science and physical education). Citizenship was not one of the subjects recommended.
Early 2012: Public consultation on the draft Programmes of Study.
Early 2012 (after the consultation, presumably): Work begins on developing the Programmes of Study.
Autumn 2012: Ministers consider the draft Programmes of Study.
September 2012: The new Programmes of Study for English, mathematics, science and physical education will be available to schools.
Early 2013: Public consultation on the draft Programmes of Study for the remaining subjects.
September 2013: Maintained schools start teaching the first batch of Programmes of Study (ie for English, mathematics, science and physical education).; New Programmes of Study for the remaining subjects are made available to schools.
September 2014: Maintained schools start teaching the second and final batch of Programmes of Study.

Legal profession not doing enough on social mobility?

Citizenship Foundation Voices — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 12:13:37 +0000

Earlier this week, the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg claimed that the legal profession “is not doing enough” to make itself more representative of society.

(See ‘Clegg: legal profession is not doing enough on social mobility‘ on legalfutures.co.uk.)

The Citizenship Foundation has worked on developing young people’s knowledge and understanding of the law for over twenty years, with considerable input from the legal profession.

We have a tremendous amount of support from both individuals and organisations. They are committed to raising not only young people’s awareness of the law but also their aspirations towards a career in law.

Every year we engage nearly 10,000 young people in the law and legal system. They are from non-fee-paying schools, often from inner-city areas of high deprivation and from a diverse range of backgrounds.

These programmes are supported annually by a huge network of legal volunteers including over 500 solicitors, 300 barrister and advocate volunteers, 800 magistrates and 80 judges.

The work is supported generously by many bodies within the sector, including The Law Society, The Bar Council, The Magistrates’ Association, The Faculty of Advocates, Bar Library of Northern Ireland, Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service and over 30 law firms and in-house legal teams.

While diversity within the profession is a significant issue, it is important to recognise just how much the profession is already doing to improve the situation.

My experiences of Lawyers in Schools

Citizenship Foundation Voices — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 08:00:36 +0000

Over the past few months, I have been interning with the legal team at the Citizenship Foundation. In November, I attended a Lawyers in Schools training session at Slaughter and May.

Here, the lawyers were given instructions on how to teach the students about the law and how to run the various activities that would help the students think more deeply about the topics. The lawyers who attended the training session all wished to devote their time to their partner school that they would be working with for the next few months.

Aside from learning about how to run the programme in the schools, the lawyers participated in one of the activities that the students would be doing in the Human Rights session. The lawyers were really involved with the activity and there was much debate over some of the issues and questions posed. The lawyers were enthusiastic and excited about the programme and were eager to volunteer their time in the schools.

I also had the opportunity to observe a Lawyers in Schools session at both The Urswick School in Hackney and Central Foundation Girls’ School in Tower Hamlets. The students were very excited to have the lawyers in their classroom and were engaged with the topics discussed. In fact, the students and the lawyers were so engaged with one particular issue that they spent the entire allotted time on one activity.

The students seemed to have learned a lot about what was being covered and were thrilled to share their beliefs on the topic. I remember one of the students at the Urswick School talked about how one should be responsible regarding the driving age. Listening in, I overheard one of the students list some of differences between the laws in the U.K. compared to the laws in the U.S.

Each of the volunteers who participated in these sessions appeared to have enjoyed their time working in the classroom. The lawyers were excited for the subsequent Lawyers in Schools sessions and getting to know their students better.

It was entertaining to watch these sessions because I liked to hear what the student’s opinions were. I also liked watching the lawyers interact with them as well. The lawyers and the students seemed as if they had learned a lot from each other and were looking forward to spending the next few months working together.

Erin is studying Business Management at Siena College in New York and has been helping us out while studying in London on a placement scheme. She has been interning at the Citizenship Foundation, helping out on the Lawyers in Schools programme, Magistrates Court Mock Trial Competition and Bar National Mock Trial Competition.

How voluntary is employee volunteering?

Citizenship Foundation Voices — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:00:07 +0000

As I come to the end of a busy training period I have been reflecting on the value of employee volunteering and specifically the willingness of the lawyers that sign up for our Lawyers in Schools programme.

Over 230 volunteers have been trained so far since September 2011 on how to engage young people in discussions about the law. The training also covers how to manage potentially challenging behaviour, child protection and many other aspects of the programme.

Before I visit each firm or in-house legal team, I can’t help but wonder if the lawyers that I am about to train are participating because they want to or if they have been coerced/bribed/threatened with expulsion off the ‘good corporate citizen’ island.

Needless to say I have been delighted, enthused and inspired by the volunteers that I have trained to take part in Lawyers in Schools. They have been positively animated and earnest about going into their partner schools. A Slaughter and May volunteer commented:

‘When I was at state school I received absolutely no legal teaching whatsoever and, with hindsight I feel that this was a serious shortcoming of my education. I believe that all young people should be given the opportunity to learn about the law.’

I am really looking forward to what I know will be another successful year of Lawyers in Schools - safe in the knowledge that there are over 400 fantastic people out there doing the legal profession proud volunteering in local schools to raise young people’s awareness of the law.

Read about one volunteer’s experience of our training.

Citizenship Education – the yeast in the dough, the grit in the oyster… The Curriculum needs the right recipe – not a new Menu

Citizenship Foundation Voices — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 09:00:05 +0000

As the Curriculum Review nears its conclusion teachers and schools across the nation are being prepared for a critical shift in the formula behind the national curriculum.

The context for the new orders couldn’t be much different from the prescriptive environment when the formula was last written. A Headteacher said to me a few weeks ago “The National Curriculum is an irrelevance to us now”. This wasn’t an opted-out Academy: it was a ‘super-head’ from an Outstanding state comprehensive who recognised that Ofsted had stopped inspecting in relation to the National Curriculum, and so had shifted his priorities accordingly. He still recognised the value of teaching to the inspection, but not to the curriculum.

This indicates that both the formulation and the context of the new curriculum – in a country heading towards a deregulated school environment – will not be the same as the previous prescription. It is expected to look more like a Menu of options with some core elements; the EBacc staples, nestling within a broader dietary mix.

Such ‘staples’ would be the equivalent of the five-a-day fruit and veg that is promoted to ensure a nutritional diet. Once a school has delivered the staples, it chooses the right elements from the menu to satisfy the bias and priorities of its customers: tailoring it to a mix of the parental palate and the child’s nutritional needs.

Deregulation means that each school will be left to create the menu, to market it to parents and validate its nutritional content to Ofsted who will then award its Michelin Guide star rating.

If you’re responding to this metaphor, you’re probably one of the wealthy few who can afford to consider the value of the Michelin stars. Meanwhile – those with less ‘educated palettes’ are looking longingly into the windows of McDonalds… which of course is a massively popular ‘restaurant’, particularly in poorer areas.

McDonalds may be a triumph of marketing formula over substantive merit, but it satisfies a certain section of the population that enjoys the pacifying nature of food more than the nuanced flavours of haute cuisine. An educated palette usually coincides with a life where basic needs have been without question, leaving one to relish its subtleties and higher sensibilities.

But here the metaphor of educational content as ‘menu’ starts to be more revealing. It suggests that we are somehow educated for appreciation: and such an education may not be through teaching, but the satiation of other needs leaving space for development. Put another way, the social and emotional prepares the context for savouring the finer elements of life.

This, for me raises the spectre of the ‘doughnut school’…. Where students can’t access the elements at the core but are satiated on the fat and sugar of the outer ring! In the same way that the menu at McDonalds contains the five-a-day (if you look hard enough) it has, on the other side of the nutritional balance, more fat and sugar than is good for you. But that does keep the customer satisfied… and coming back… and in the system.

So perhaps there needs to be a shift in the metaphor? The curriculum doesn’t need a new menu but a new recipe. Something that keeps ‘broad and balanced’ within the staples and not as a result of the menu choice?

Unlike a Menu, a recipe is a set of ingredients that play off each other in order to create the most satisfying final result. In that sense – we propose that citizenship education is not just another subject – but the subject that brings sense to the rest. It engages the social and emotional into the rest of learning in that it contextualises and generates a substantive assessment of many other subjects. It also gives you the critical facts and understanding of your own context that could otherwise leave core subjects feeling abstract, particularly if other aspects of survival are absent or overwhelm you.

It’s therefore not an optional part of the menu, but an equivalent to the yeast in the dough: the thing that makes the rest rise.

Alternatively – you could say – its dose of reality is the grit in the Oyster: but that’s a whole other biological and culinary metaphor…

Lawyers in Schools training session

Citizenship Foundation Voices — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:29:57 +0000

Victoria Honan is an in-house lawyer at Rio Tinto. Rio Tinto and Baker McKenzie have come on board the Lawyers in Schools scheme this year joining forces to deliver sessions at Sion Manning Roman Catholic School.

Earlier this month Victoria underwent a training session for the programme and kindly wrote the following about her experience:

The training was very informative and interesting. It covered what the Citizenship Foundation is about, what Lawyers in Schools is trying to achieve and how the sessions would run. The presenter made it very interactive so we were asking questions all the time and you never felt like you were asking a silly question.

Probably the most useful section was how to deal with certain behaviours in the classroom as this is the most daunting prospect. The presenter gave us loads of helpful hints and guidance for dealing with different behaviours and I think it put all our minds at ease.

The training was extremely useful as it addressed all the key concerns I had around the content of the course and how to approach the topics and the students.

I am now excited about getting started as this has been in the pipeline for a quite a number of months. Visiting the school and meeting the teacher has enhanced that excitement as it makes it very real what we are trying to achieve and the impact we will have.

My response when asked why I wanted to get involved in the scheme was and still is that whilst I was in private practice I participated in the Lawyers in Schools programme and I found it very rewarding, although utterly exhausting (one hour with a group of 15 year olds is much more tiring that one hour with a client). I was keen to get involved in a community project and this is so worthwhile as it makes a real impact on the students. If we manage to inspire just one student (even a small amount), to go to college and work hard to achieve their goals, that would be amazing.

The Youth Climate Network meet Chris Huhne!

Global Citizenship — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 11:06:45 +0000

My name is Tehseen Mirza and I am studying Dental Technology at Manchester Metropolitan University. Yesterday I and four other members of the UK Youth Climate Network, funded by Plan UK, travelled to the Foreign and Commonwealth Offices in Westminster.

It marked the culmination of our One Step campaign that we’ve been running this year. We’ve collected nearly 2000 pledges from young people all over the UK – telling how they’ll make one simple change to combat climate change. Every pledge is written on a individually-designed footprint. They range from “I will take shorter showers” to “I will grow my own vegetables” to “I won’t leave the TV on standby”. The aim of the campaign was to hand these pledges to the UK government, to build momentum for change before the UN Climate Summit in Durban at the end of November.

First we attended a special climate webcast. The panel consisted of the Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne, the foreign secretary William Hague, South Africa’s Ambassador at Large for Climate Change, Nozipho Mxakato-Diskeko and the Chief Executive of the British Council, Martin Davidson.

The webcast was really interesting and it was beneficial to have the opportunity to address the issues that we were concerned about. I asked a question to the panel which was ‘What can be done to educate the public more on climate change’ and in fairness I got a good response and felt like the panel understood the importance of making the public aware of positive ways to combat climate change.

After the webcast we had the opportunity to speak to Chris Huhne and present the ‘One Step’ campaign. We told him what we had been doing and how we have had success collecting pledges from young people from different parts of the UK. We even showed him one of the “steps” sent in from Bradford that was designed by 4 year olds in a reception class at Peel Park school in Bradford! We also stressed the importance of Mr. Huhne taking young people’s voices on climate change issues to the COP17 in Durban and making young people’s voices heard. Cat Hudson, from the Youth Climate Network, is going to be in Durban and she will be keeping in touch with Chris Huhne during the summit.

Tehseen Mirza from the Youth Climate Network

Blog posted on the Make the Link - Climate exChange website

In the jungle the mighty jungle will the lions sleep tomorrow night?

Global Citizenship — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 14:00:23 +0000

A visit to the land of Simba

On August 7^th, the Make the Link Climate exChange team met in the “land of simba” – Kenya. Simba in Swahili means lion, but most of you probably learned this by getting to know Mustafa’s son Simba, the star in Disney’s “The Lion King”.

Lions are a source of income for Kenya thanks to protected national reserves. In fact, tourists from all over the world come and bring in an approximate 620 million pounds each year. For this reason, it is distressing to read that Kenya’s lions could disappear within the next ten years.

According to an article in the new scientist, 100 lions are disappearing from Kenya each year. The major reason is the destruction of their habitat, but drought has also been a contributing factor. Kenya is experiencing a severe drought and this is leading to rural people going into “wildlife areas in search of grazing and water supplies for their herds of livestock”. The increase of severe drought is linked to climate change. I am writing about lions because their disappearance has something to do with what our project is about because in the next ten years the young people we are working with will inherit our world and will have to solve one of our greatest challenges ahead: climate change.

Make the Link – Climate exChange is all about young people’s increased awareness and understanding of the global dimensions of climate change. During one week in Kisumu, Kenya’s third biggest city, our representatives from Kenya, Malawi, Bulgaria, the Netherlands and the UK met to discuss how we take the programme forward and keep on inspiring teachers and young people on let’s be honest a quite dry topic.

The highlight of the meeting was a surprise visit to three schools in Kisumu, where we met with Peter, the head teacher of Obola Primary school, Richard doing a water and sanitation project at Nyabera primary school and Florence and Atieno from Nyamgun Primary school. It was so inspiring to see that our African partner schools have both solar panels, green houses and are using the power of the sun to keep students healthy. Encouraging teachers and students to adapt to climate change will be very important in East Africa, because the drought is not something happening 10 years down the line, it is happening now. Make the Link – Climate exChange wants to bring this reality back to Europe in order to ensure that in the jungle the mighty jungle the lions will still sleep tomorrow tonight… if we continue our work on halting climate change…

Blog posted on the Make the Link - Climate exChange website

Challenging and Changing global education?

Global Citizenship — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 16:48:13 +0000

In 1717, Derby used to be the centre of the Industrial Revolution. A water powered silk mill, a knitting machine and a cotton spinning machine where amongst the many great innovations that speeded up the Industrial Revolution and it all happened in the city of Derby!

Now, let’s fast forward 300 years to an interdependent and globalised world where textile production has moved miles away from Derby and where most of us haven’t ever seen a knitting machine. Today Derby has a new niche and one of them is that it has become the centre for global education- well that’s my experience at least.

From July 4^th till July 8^th I attended an EC funded training ran by Global Education Derby called Connect, Challenge and Change. For five intense days along with participants from Turkey, Romania, Poland and other parts of the UK we debated how we can get young people excited about global issues.

Raul, from Mundi, an organisation part of the East Midlands International Youth Work and Development Education Network, showed two photos: one with blue fin tuna and the other with people on a small fishing boat in the middle of the sea. He asks us what the connection was between the images. Overfishing is a big problem in the Mediterranean, which has meant that a lot of fishermen have lost their jobs due to large fishing corporations, hence leading to an influx of economic migrants in Europe. Global education is not about learning to play an African instrument, he states, it is about getting young people to critically question their surroundings.

I guess the overarching question about the training was, “How do we get young people to engage and critically question their environment?” Ruth and Alison our lovely facilitators from Global Education Derby made us explore this through workshops where we connected, where we were challenged and where we were inspired to change.

During the first day we looked at how we get young people to connect to global issues using their experiences as a starting point. Using a shower curtain that had a huge world map, we were asked to take a little chip and place it on the country where our clothes were from. Most of us unsurprisingly put it on China. A simple shower curtain sparked a long debate about capitalism, globalisation, and the textile industry and youth unemployment.

On the second day of our training we were challenged by role play. I was asked to play the role of the coca farmer in Bolivia. My name was Juan of course. We argued we had to continue growing the coca plant because it was our livelihood and the only thing that would make us stop would be better opportunities in life. We had grown coca for our whole life and it would be hard to get a new job, moreover it gave us enough money to send our children to school and pay for our doctor. After presenting each role we then saw a video were the coca growers actually explained why the coca plant was so important to their culture. They would do toothpaste, shampoo, tea, beds and all kinds of products by the coca plant. This was an interesting eye opener for me.

On our last day of training we were asked to discuss change and how we get young people to do it on a personal level, local and national level. We watched some really inspiring videos. One of them was about young people in Tower Hamlets who had led a campaign against the arms fair that happened in their local community. The young people were asking the organisers how come they sold arms to countries were people kill each other.

I believe this links very well with what the Citizenship Foundation does through our previous Youth Act work, Act Global, Giving Nation and now the project I run called Make the Link – Climate exChange which links young people to environmental issues. Global education to me is very much about getting young people gain confidence on how to live in a 21st century world and adapt to the fast-paced changes.

Global education is a field in transition now due to obvious reasons of funding. As practitioners we still need to wonder why we haven’t been able to make a stronger case for the UK government of how valuable it is for young people to understand the global interdependencies between countries and how that affects them on a daily life. I thank Global Education Derby for an insightful week and I am looking forward to join forces on this continuous complex debate of what global education in the 21^st century should look like.

Our front page has changed!

Webmaster — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 09:18:21 +0000

We have made some changes to our website front page, which we hope will make it even more relevant to our many visitors.

We want the front page of our website to demonstrate our current work more effectively and to make it easier for you to find things of interest to you.

Our front page is important as it’s the first point of entry for most visitors to the Citizenship Foundation. Is unlikely we will be able to do substantial work to the rest of the website any time soon, but we are working hard to build strong links across the site and to write more engaging content.

Do tell us what you think. Your feedback is important as it will help us develop a front page that is right for our visitors.

Online communications guides

Webmaster — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 20:59:13 +0000

I was recently asked if I would share the guidelines that I produced to support our staff in communicating online.

They cover blogging and social media, law and writing and editing content.

They are not policies as such; and please bear in mind they were written for a specific internal audience. But if they could be of use to you do feel free to adapt them (they’re licenced under Creative Commons BY-SA).

I would also be very interested to hear your feedback on them.

With the power to supply public services comes greater public scrutiny of voluntary sector organisations

Webmaster — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 10:21:38 +0000

The government’s Localism Bill was published yesterday, as was a guidance document. The latter confirms that power will be devolved to the community and that data will be made public for the scrutiny of that power.

“The Big Society is what happens whenever people work together for the common good. It is about achieving our collective goals in ways that are more diverse, more local and more personal.

“The best contribution that central government can make is to devolve power, money and knowledge to those best placed to find the best solutions to local needs: elected local representatives, frontline public service professionals, social enterprises, charities, co-ops, community groups, neighbourhoods and individuals.”

Central to this is a continued commitment to releasing public data for the public to use:

“Public access to public data provides the evidence base for public pressure and action, both on the part of those proposing new ways to deliver services and on the part of service users thus enabled to make an informed choice. This is what we mean by ‘transparency’: the ability to see how government actually works - or doesn’t work.

“…there can be no local innovation without local control of resources. Nor can local decision- making succeed without access to the government data on which informed judgement depends”.

The approach is to “focus on outcome, not process, and to release such knowledge into the public domain as raw data - so that anyone can analyse and visualise the information, spot trends and make connections that would otherwise go unseen”.

I haven’t yet seen anything that puts an expectation on the voluntary sector to release data, and to do so in an open format, but if they are to deliver services that the public are expected to scrutinise then inevitably it will need to happen. And it will, rightly, need to happen across the board - regardless of whether an organisation is delivering a public service or not.

The question then is what data should be released, and how? NCVO is already encouraging charities to release data and Open Charities has opened up the charity register; the Charity Commission itself, however, seems to be lagging behind at the moment.

I expect it won’t be allowed to lag for long though. The voluntary sector may well be about to find itself under a lot more scrutiny, not just from government and funders but the general public too.

There is more discussion around open local data on the Open Local Data Blog.

Guess what? Digital tools are not a panacea for inefficient public services

Webmaster — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 15:53:03 +0000

At the end of October I went to a conference in Birmingham about ‘delivering public services for less’, which looked to digital technology for the answer to delivering more efficient public services for less money. It seems to me, though, that it’s a lot more complicated than most people want to admit.

The strapline on the Beyond 2010 conference programme was ‘More for less’, which was challenged by one or two of the speakers. In the words of Robert Hardy, of Robert Hardy Consulting: ”It’s not more for less, and it’s not less for less: it’s different for less”. In other words, we shouldn’t delude ourselves that technology will somehow allow us miraculously to squeeze more out of existing models with less expenditure: a radical change of culture is required.

That was refreshing, but on the whole it felt that radical change was being expected to come from the adoption of technology rather than being the driving force for it.

There was a lot of talk (particularly in light of the recent Comprehensive Spending Review) of opportunities to bring about these radical changes and efficiencies to public service delivery through the adoption of digital technologies.

Unfortunately I didn’t hear much, over the course of two days, that hasn’t been said pretty continuously for at least the past decade. Back in the late 1990s I was sat in meetings organised by government departments, discussing how technology was going to solve the issues of voter turnout and simultaneously bring down administration costs; little has changed. While the conference speakers seemed oblivious to this, they did seem to believe what they were saying; unfortunately my experience doesn’t tell me that miraculous savings are made by relying on technology, and it certainly doesn’t fill me with confidence that any of them have even half-grasped the challenges they face in transforming service delivery through technology.

Inefficiency is a human trait (or ‘failing’, if you really must): organisations and systems are only as efficient as the human beings running them. And no matter how organised someone is, none of us is a robot: we all make errors of judgment and we all have some days that are better than others. So the inefficiencies of people create complex systems, which in turn exacerbate the problem; if a person is inefficient I expect it’s generally because something about the system allows or encourages them to be. My limited experience suggests that all systems are inefficient but that larger ones are less able to be flexible and responsive. (An example of that might be where an organisation grows because it needs extra capacity to respond to its audience effectively, but at the same time loses valuable internal networks as it becomes less informal.)

And what is meant by ‘efficiency’ anyway, and who decides that? For it to mean anything at all requires everyone in the organisation to be working within the same parameters, which to be set will have to be determined somehow (probably by targets and measurements). And those parameters are themselves the product of the very same inefficient system that they are trying to address.

So how do you safeguard against that? I think skills are the key: if an organisation or system contains the appropriate skills, then human behaviour can be managed and capitalised on effectively. It would seem to me that skills are of fundamental importance if we hope to see such major changes to public service delivery as are being called for. And not just those skills required for using the new tools at our disposal, but skills for every aspect of public life. If we want radical change in the provision of public services, someone in any given organisation needs to champion that and enable it to happen. That in itself requires skills: skills for understanding the nature of the task, for managing people, for identifying issues and solutions, etc; skills even for identifying necessary skills in the first place (a tricky one when you’re at the top of the pyramid). No matter how flat an organisation, there will always be people where the buck stops; if these individuals don’t have the skills to manage the change that people are calling for then it doesn’t matter if everyone else is skilled up to the eyeballs, the exercise will be doomed to fail.

Yet skills were hardly mentioned during this conference.

There was also a noticeable lack of attention paid to other areas of policy, with little acknowledgement that these massive challenges to public services are not confined to their own protective bubble. Formal education, for example, wasn’t discussed as a key component of IT skills development, and yet uncertainty currently surrounds the nature of ICT in the National Curriculum; interrogating and understanding the implications - both apparent and hidden - of all the public data we’re being offered requires skills that currently are tied to the citizenship curriculum, yet there are fears for the future of citizenship too.

Digital innovation in the public realm requires all sorts of other skills, and links across lots of policy areas. In order to for the impending upheaval of public service delivery to have any positive impact, in my opinion, the decision-makers in that process need to be careful not to become blinded by the promises of well-meaning but often excitable digital enthusiasts.

Many thanks to Paul Clarke for his support in writing this.

Charities encouraged to release data

Webmaster — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 09:14:18 +0000

I’ve just been alerted to the Voluntary Sector Datastore, launched recently by NCVO to encourage the voluntary sector to match government in its release of data to the public.

NCVO , the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, has put its ‘toe in the water’ by publishing some of its data to the new datastore in a bid to encourage others to do the same.

‘Essentially, we’d like to see the sector match government in opening up what we’ve got so that society as a whole can realise the benefits of sharing and mashing data together and then visualising it. This space is our toe in the water to start pulling that together.’

‘How easy is it to contact us?’ Survey result

Webmaster — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 09:00:12 +0000

We asked visitors to our website to tell us how easy they found it to contact us. The number of responses was low and, sadly, many of them were puerile and unrelated to the survey.

However, a number of comments were interesting and enlightening, and will prove invaluable feedback; and, happily, the majority of respondents were satisfied with their experience.

Many thanks to all who gave relevant feedback. We shall continue to work at making ourselves as available and approachable as we can.

Internet Explorer issues being addressed

Webmaster — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 14:41:23 +0000

Internet Explorer users have been experiencing layout problems with our website.

We believe this is just due to a couple of css-related issues we overlooked yesterday, and hope to have it fixed within the hour.

Update

This is now fixed.

A tidier website, with better information about us

Webmaster — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 16:01:02 +0000

I have, at last, been able to make some long overdue tweaks to our website.

Most are stylesheet changes, tackling consistency of layout and readability of text. It’s been a lot of work that most people probably won’t notice, and there are still bits to iron out, but it is a lot tidier now.

I have also tightened up some of the content, in particular the information about our work and what we mean by ‘citizenship‘.

How easy is it to contact the Citizenship Foundation?

Webmaster — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 16:37:12 +0000

Have you tried contacting us in the past? If so, was it a good experience?

We’re conducting a short survey into how accessible we are as an organisation: can you find contact details easily, do we respond in a reasonable time, is our response adequate, et cetera.

We should be very grateful if you would take a few minutes to tell us what you think. The survey will be up for four weeks and then we’ll review it and let you know what our next move is, so keep your eyes peeled on this blog.

School student learning preferences: a visualisation

Webmaster — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:27:34 +0000

So far I have not been very good at demonstrating our work visually. To begin redressing this I have had a go at visualising some of the results from last year’s political engagement research.

In one part of our survey, school students in the 11-19 age range were asked which topics they thought they should be taught more of. I took the data I wanted to visualise and created a new table with it. Then, with the help of tutorials from flowingdata.com, I used the statistical computing framework R to turn the numbers into both a heat map and a set of Chernoff faces. I then used a vector drawing package (Inkscape, to be precise) to tidy up and tailor the images.

Heat map

In the heat map image below, the ‘hotter’ the topic the more important the students thought it was.

Chernoff faces

The bigger, happier and more elaborate the face (in the image below), the more important its associated topic was felt to be. The characteristics of the faces are determined by the data for each age group.

All of that was derived from a csv file of a simple table of data:

“Which four, if any, of the following do you think your school or college should spend MORE time teaching you about?”
Subject	All	Age 14	Age 15	Age 16	Age 17	Age 18	Age 19
Banking, mortgages and personal finance	304	50	58	43	49	50	54
Politics and current affairs	243	30	29	40	44	49	51
The economy	213	34	39	32	37	30	41
Law	161	28	23	28	30	26	26
My rights as a citizen	164	28	33	31	25	24	23
Sex and relationships	122	17	16	26	20	19	24
Responsibilities as a citizen	98	20	24	13	15	14	12
Different views and lifestyles	101	10	15	21	22	18	15
Morality	101	15	15	16	19	18	18
Health	97	19	15	18	14	15	16
Skills for effective participation in community & politics	104	17	18	17	17	22	13
Drugs, alcohol & substance abuse	101	22	21	19	12	13	14
How I can make my community a better place	73	19	13	10	10	14	7
How I can help people in need	62	14	9	10	11	9	9
None of these	26	3	2	3	5	7	6
Don’t know	28	6	6	4	5	3	4

Become a campaigner for the youth climate network

Global Citizenship — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:28:16 +0000

ARE YOU READY TO BE THE VOICES OF THE FUTURE?

Are you:

    * between 15 and 19?
    * passionate about climate change issues?
    * able to commit several weekends to this project?
    * willing to travel short and long distances?

Become part of the UK Youth Climate Network in the International ‘Make the Link Climate exChange’ Project.

‘Make the Link – Climate exChange’ is a development education project run across six partner countries: the UK, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Kenya, Malawi and Senegal.

This three year EU-funded project aims to increase public awareness of the links between climate change, poverty and child rights through resources and an interactive web platform where young people from the global north and south can exchange thoughts and experiences about climate change.

For application form continue in the link:

http://www.plan-uk.org/about/jobopportunities/youth-climate-network-project/

An educational adventure in Lithuania

Global Citizenship — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:37:31 +0000

I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the DARE Network meeting in Lithuania’s capital city, Vilnius from 1-3 July 2010. The afternoon of our second day was set aside for a field trip to Lithuania’s Soviet past. In my experience, this type of lesson is often demonstrated by a visit to a museum or perhaps by watching a film dramatisation of historical events. I was quite surprised and intrigued to learn that our approach would be much more hands-on: any willing participants would be taking part in a so-called ‘reality show’ in a Soviet bunker, spending the afternoon as citizens of a communist state who were imprisoned.

A brave bunch of us got on a bus and were taken out of the capital city, through forests of tall trees and stretches of road. We were passed around a ‘confirmation’ to sign where we agreed to become citizens of the USSR, obey orders and endure punishments if we did not comply. It certainly all played into the experience and by the time we pulled of the road and into the remote location, my heart was pounding! Upon arrival, a guard dressed in full military regalia entered the bus and announced that we no longer had the right to personal belongings and anyone found with any would be punished. As we entered the main building, we were given a few minutes to get dressed - we each donned had a heavy, smelly damp coat that fitted like long dresses on some of the petite women with a record blaring in the background that could only make me think of old war movies. Soon the General entered and his booming voice began shouting commands at us in Russian that we had to learn to obey, although we had a translator for everything else that he would say. After marching into the next room and being searched by our guard’s enormous German shepherd, we marched outside to the national anthem and soon found ourselves 5 metres below ground in the bunker.

We ran through the dimly lit corridors, being yelled at with the dog always barking and snarling behind us from somewhere. We were taken to various parts of the bunker, although a few particularly stand out in my mind. One was the room where we had to learn how to put a gas mask on in three seconds and wear it. This was no friendly lesson as we had to wear the mask and jump around while being yelled at by the General. We also spent some time in the KGB medical room, and finally the KGB interrogation room, with a lone spotlight shining in the eyes of the interrogated prisoner that was chosen while we stood still against the walls of the small room watching quietly.

Our experience came to a close after two hours that felt much longer, with a final themed lunch in the dining hall before being allowed to see the light of day again. On the ride back into Vilnius, and for the rest of the evening, many of us discussed our take on the experience. Many of the participants had snickered throughout, as they were able to detach themselves from the experience and see it is a play. Others, including myself had managed to get very involved and felt that it was really happening to us, as silly as it may sound. In the end, I felt like it was an extremely powerful experience and that I really surprised myself. I didn’t think I would be so affected by it and that I would actually be able to see how I would react in these circumstances. Despite it being a dramatisation, I really felt like I learnt much more than had I visited a museum or seen a film. I don’t think that this learning tool would be appropriate for every historical lesson, but in this situation I can attest that taking part in a simulation had a great impact on me that I won’t soon forget.

UK Participants Wanted for an International Project Europamobil: 30 September -24 October 2010 in Paris

Global Citizenship — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:10:30 +0000

Europamobil is a mobile project promoting European diversity to pupils. In order to do this, twenty participating students and graduates from different European countries will travel in a bus and visit 11 schools in the Ile-de-France region of France.
In each school they will organise workshops and seminars for pupils about European issues. The participants will develop the programme themselves during a preparatory week prior to the travel. Participants can gain practical experience in an international project environment, learn about European integration process and pedagogical methods.

The deadline for applications is July 15th 2010.
For more information contact the project coordinator Magdalena Kurpiewska 0049 (0) 33 78 - 80 59 50 or email: kurpiewska@stiftung-genshagen.de.
Project website: www.europamobil-online.eu

Photography Competition Open for Entries

Global Citizenship — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 09:15:05 +0000

Plan International has teamed up with Shoot Experience to launch the fifth annual Shoot Nations global youth photography competition.
Shoot Nations is free to enter, and is open to anyone between the ages of 11 and 25 with two age group categories, 11 - 16 years and 17 - 25 years. Each year thousands of youngsters from more than 100 countries take part in the online contest in a bid to be crowned the world’s best young snapper with a presentation to the UN headquarters in New York.
The project is being sponsored by MTV, Olympus, The Independent on Sunday, National Geographic and The Future Mapping Company.
For information on the photos already submitted visit the Shoot Nations 2010 website: www.shootnations.org and for further information on the competition contact Rachel Landman @ rachel.landman@plan-international.org & Facebook: facebook.com/shootnations & Twitter: twitter.com/shoot_nations

Local Learning, Global Citizenship Conference 28 June 2010

Global Citizenship — Fri, 21 May 2010 15:05:45 +0000

Preparing our students for life in an increasingly complex world requires compelling learning experiences that challenge perceptions and stimulate curiosity. Curriculum reforms across the UK have put the global dimension and skills for the 21st century firmly on the agenda. The 2010 Annual Conference for UNESCO Associated Schools in the UK will be an opportunity to get behind the headlines and develop concrete ideas for how teachers can meet curriculum requirements and take forward local learning and global citizenship in schools. Workshops include: Running a Model United Nations, Discovering Cultural Identities and Using Media Tools to Support Global Learning. The event is free and open to all schools. For further information, please visit www.unesco.org.uk or contact Anne Breivik at abreivik@unesco.org.uk to register.

Looking for Young People to Join a Fellowship Programme on Climate Change at Plan UK during Summer 2010

Global Citizenship — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 14:54:49 +0000

Are you 18 to 21 years old and are ready for a challenge?

Take part in the 2010 Young Citizens Learning Fellowship Programme in London organised by Plan UK!

The 2010 Young Citizens Learning Fellowship Programme is a two week placement with Plan UK in London. During the two weeks in 31^st July - 15^th August, you will have the opportunity to engage and learn about Plan’s work in partnership with Citizenship Foundation on a collective learning project funded by the EU on climate change, Make the Link - Climate exChange. This project aims to increase public awareness of the links between climate change, poverty and child rights.

As Youth Fellows, you will take part in activities and discussions on the impact of climate change on young people’s lives. We are looking for someone who is happy to make a long-lasting commitment to the project’s aims, who would like to join Plan on a longer-term role and play a significant role as youth advisers to Make the Link Climate exChange project.

Living and working in London with 5 other young people, with all travel and accommodation costs paid for plus a daily allowance and a chance to see how an international NGO works, this is an opportunity of a lifetime!

The deadline for applications is Friday 7^th May 2010, 5pm

All applicants must be able to travel during the month of August and be aged between 18 and 21.

Please contact Jo Dempster, Youth Engagement Officer at Plan UK for more information at:

Jo.Dempster@plan-international.org

www.plan-uk.org

A speech to 3000 people. Not scary at all … !?!

Global Citizenship — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:14:33 +0000

Today was the big speech. Palms sweating, 3000 agitated young people watching and the proceedings were an hour and a half late – never a good way to sooth nervous presenters. Ruth and I were talking about how to support young people to have a positive impact on their community. Before we came out here we thought we would have a practical approach and one which the delegates would find relevant and useful. Two days in it seems that they have already nailed youth voice here.
The way in which they work out here uses models of quality circles used in industries and then they apply the model to schools. Students of a young age here learn about Gantt charts, cause and effect models and various data management and they use those skills to apply to the problem the have identified in the school and the way in which they plan to solve it.
The essence of it is very similar to our very own Youth Act, but the business link (to companies like Toyota who started the original quality circles for company improvements ) which the Asian quality circles employ, is perhaps what we could learn from. Very quickly Ruth and I were applauding the audience for their passion and enthusiasm rather than the other way round (!).
Having said that, people did seem enthused by our work at the Foundation. People found our projects an innovative approach to teaching young people about the law, politics and the economy. So much so one woman congratulated us saying her daughter attended a school in Hounslow, London and took part in the lawyers in schools programme and the mock trials – her daughter is now training to be a lawyer (our eyes lit up at this very ‘fundable’ anecdote as you can imagine). It just goes to show how far our programmes reach and the impact they have not just on communities, but also on individuals lives. This convention in India is making me constantly feel either proud of our own achievements at the Foundation, or in awe of what is being achieved globally. (Clearly it’s been a long day due to my cheesey sentiments)
To top it all off Tony has just cut the red ribbon on the opening of a Citizenship Foundation Pan – Asian office, much to Ruth and I’s surprise. This celeb status is really going to our heads now …
Over and out, Nicola