Getting ready for action!
This year Carmarthenshire is proud to be supporting 18 of its schools with Walk the Global Walk, three times the number that were involved in the project initially. This means that we have a team of close to 100 Global Goalkeepers, the vast majority of whom participated in online training and action planning workshops held on 10 and 12 March 2021.
The first workshop was for secondary school pupils aged 12-14 while the second was focussed on our primary school pupils aged 9-11. The programme for both kicked off with an SDGs quiz or puzzle and then the tone for the events was set by an introduction from two inspirational young peace activists from y Cymod Ifanc, Ffion Griffiths and Jac Sollis. Our newly elected Global Goalkeepers were then introduced to their roles and reminded of some of the issues covered in our SDG 16 resource pack.
It would be a tall order to expect our young people to take action on such issues without further input and support so they were then introduced to the council’s participation officer, to representatives from Show Racism the Red Card as well as to artists, poets and a digital animator. These brave souls had just 3 minutes each to do an elevator pitch, promoting their work, before schools split off into breakout rooms to decide on issues, actions and who to choose to support them.
The issues chosen were varied and include Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ+ Rights, and Fast Fashion. We are delighted to report that all the providers were selected by at least one school and they will be offering workshops for the interested parties next month.
Feedback was phenomenally positive and included comments such as “I really enjoyed feeling that us teenagers and young adults can make our voice be heard, that we can take action and that there are people that can help us along the way.”
We can’t wait to continue supporting the young people and to see the campaigns and creative outputs that will result from the workshops, as well as the entries to our Digital Media Challenge, when they are shared at our virtual celebration in May. In the meantime, good luck to all our Global Goalkeepers and their teachers as they return to school and many thanks to all who contributed to the success of the events.
