SDG Ambassadors

Project objective:

The overall project objective is to educate and engage 8th grade students and teachers at 7 schools in Fredensborg kommune around the SDGs and development work consciously by actively engaging with the SDGs as a framework for action.

Purpose of the project:

The purpose of the project is to engage 8th grade students in development work through the SDGs and through cross-cultural South-North youth-to-youth mutual learning and knowledge exchange. The goal is to give the youth the necessary background knowledge that allows them to create their own vision for engaging in development of a better world using the SDGs as a framework. Hence this project intends to raise awareness and empower the student target groups to strengthen their civic engagement. The project will show how our target group can strengthen their civic engagement through a collaboration between public, private and civil society partners. This will be done through a number of interlocking activities and facilitating platforms aimed to ensure the students take ownership of engaging with the SDGs, and they by project end know how to engage with civil society and development work.

We aim to get students and teachers to support and engage in or with the SDGs and civil society work; it is about enhancing civic engagement towards the SDGs and development work through learning and taking action on what has been learned. We have chosen to consider the young people as being outside or at the three lowest stages of the engagement pyramid. The goal of this project is therefore to move the young people several levels up the engagement pyramid and thus promote participation by:

Conducting workshop series for the 7 schools at Fredensborg based on a tested methodology provided by Promentum on how to create SDGs Ambassadors. The project will develop material that will enhance public education around the SDGs in development work in a way that promotes the students becoming aware, self-consciously engaged and finding ways of taking action for a more sustainable world.

Using real life stories, creative materials and cases provided by 7 African civil society partners (from Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe) and direct youth-to-youth engagement with schools in Africa, the Danish 8 grade student target group for this project will gain broad perspectives on how the SDGs are both global and local at the same time. They will then take this knowledge with them as they are set the task of taking local action on the SDGs through their own creativity. The young people’s participation and commitment is expected to be promoted by making use of material from the Global South – and by giving Danish young people the opportunity to express their thoughts and attitudes through debates and the development of action plans for engaging the SDGs. The materials from the Global South are used to raise the young people’s voices to a level where they can have an influence at the same time as the individual is strengthened. Selected themes through real cases are able to create a degree of recognizability and identification that can make complex global issues become concrete and present. Themes from cases taken up with the youth will be e.g., ‘Climate change affecting youth’, ‘Stigmatization and discrimination’ and ‘Youth and going to school’. The background to several of these themes is often linked to more complex local and global issues such as poverty, high youth unemployment, poor educational opportunities and gender inequality. The themes therefore link together with up to several of the SDG´s, which will also come through in both the methodology and content of the workshops.

Facilitating engagement platforms for student action groups in Fredensborg – For this, a collaboration of four Danish project partners (comprising of both public, civil society and private project partners with the participation of 7 schools in Fredensborg Kommune, Crossing Borders, 100% for Children and Promentum) will mobilize and activate students and teachers and private companies in Fredensborg Kommune to engage with this project’s aim of enhancing civic engagement and active participation in development work for the SDGs and Agenda 2030. This will be done through action plans formulated by the students them-selves on how they can act on the SDG´s and a more sustainable world in their own local communities – and which stakeholders they find relevant to engage with. The 4 project partners will facilitate this process.

Facilitating the 8th grade students with platforms within civil society for further engagement and sustainability. The students will be introduced to how development projects work in relation to SDGs; how to become part of a Danish civil society organisations; how Danish civil society organisations collaborate with their partners from the Global South, and why and how development collaborating with a partner from another country on a development project helps in more ways than just simply through transfering money for activities; and lastly why development work is also carried out by civil society rather than just bilateral between states or multilateral through the e.g. the UN and finally how to become part of a Danish civil society organisation or interns at Ubuntuhouse in the centre of Copenhagen.

Involved Partners:

Crossing Borders – Denmark

Promentum A/S  – Denmark

100% for the Children – Denmark/Ghana

Fredensborg Kommune – Denmark