Raising global citizens

Mothers Acting Up Recipe

Raising Global Citizens School Project:

Mothers inspiring awareness, education and action in the classroom

Studies show that a majority of mothers spend time in their children’s elementary school classrooms. Volunteer activities are vast including: organizing snack calendars, setting up field trips, managing book orders, fundraising and more. A recent addition to this lengthy list is initiating and supporting service-learning projects.  Raising Global Citizens is a project to give mothers and others the inspiration and tools they need to introduce service-learning projects intended to prepare our children to live in a global society as actively engaged global citizens.

This recipe was developed during a pilot project with the 4th grade class at Flatirons Elementary School and draws upon the work of many issued-based organizations developing curriculum for teachers.  The United Kingdom has progressively led the movement to incorporate a global dimension in the national curriculum. By inspiring mothers to bring this model to their children’s classrooms, Mothers Acting Up hopes the United States will follow. Home-schooling mamas can easily adapt this recipe.

Time required: Approx. 2 hours per week for 10 weeks

Ingredients:

• 1-2 MAU’s with children aged 9-12
• A supportive teacher
• Yogurt containers, table clothes, dishes, lunch fixings
• Access to a computer and internet connection to download online materials for activities/simulations
• Educational simulations on issues impacting the world’s children: poverty, health care, education, the environment, clean water, conflict (see the resource list, appendix __)
• A bulletin board area to display project news
• A copy of the school curriculum in order to enhance classroom learning

Recipe serves to:

• Support students in developing empathy with children around the world.
• Teach students HOW to advocate for others through: personal action, engaging community, and influencing decision makers.
• Empower students to develop their leadership and create a positive future for the world.

AWARENESS Project Kick-Off: World Sits Down to Lunch 

The World Sits Down Lunch is a hunger banquet, a powerful “hands on” experience that brings to life the inequalities in our world and challenges us to realize how our decisions affect others in the world. Few will leave the lunch with a full stomach, but all leave filled with a greater understanding of what life is like for children around the world. This will be the single most talked about activity of the project.

The students will be divided into three income groups according to the world’s population: MORE THAN ENOUGH (15%), ENOUGH (25%), and NOT ENOUGH (60%). Their meal will be representative of what people in that group would eat. It is very powerful for children to experience for 30 minutes what children around the world experience at mealtime everyday. Children might cry, especially if their mom is organizing the lunch and they pick a not enough ticket. Recovery time is quick and children refer to experience over and over again.

Preparation:

• Schedule a date and time for lunch and a one-hour debriefing time preferably the next day.
• Food and table preparations (see chart below for suggestions).
• Invite other parents to prepare food for the banquet.
• Give each table a color code and print tickets for each of the three income groups. For 50 children MORE THAN ENOUGH (8 students), ENOUGH (12 students), and NOT ENOUGH (30 students). 
• Three teachers and/or parents (1 to eat at each table) to experience and help process the lunch.
• Two high schools students (or parents) to serve the MORE THAN ENOUGH table and send beggers away.

Income Group	Table Setting	Food
More than enough 10% of the group	Festive linen tablecloth, flowers in the center, real silverware, fun dishes, glassware, cloth napkins Spacious table with chairs	Burrito fixings, rice, beans, meat, tortillas, sour cream, guacamole, salsa, yummy dessert, fuzzy beverage served in special glasses Access to multiple servings
Enough 25% of the group	Tablecloth, paper plates with plastic spork, paper napkins, paper cups Crowded table with chairs	Beans, rice, juice, one cookie for each person One serving
Not enough 60% of the group	Recycled yogurt or other plastic containers, table cloth on the floor, big container and ladle to fetch water from the water fountain on the other side of school No table, no chairs, each child has one container and will use it  for both rice and water	Rice and water Prepare what seems to be barely enough and allow group to serve themselves and ask a few members of the group to go fetch water for the others

Suggestion: Send communication to all the parents letting them know of the World Sits Down to Lunch. Ask them not to bring lunch or snack that day. Provide a simple snack such as carrots and crackers to the children, so they will start on equal ground. If possible, ask the parents to refrain from sharing the details of the lunch with their children, as it will have more impact.

The Lunch:

1. Prepare the classroom when the students are away from the class (recess).
2. Set up three distinct areas with color-coded sign (MORE THAN ENOUGH, ENOUGH, NOT ENOUGH).
3. Place food in the center of the eating areas for ENOUGH and NOT ENOUGH groups. Display food for the MORE THAN ENOUGH table in a visible place and then have the food served.
4. Gather the students outside the lunch area and invite students to draw a ticket and proceed to their table.
5. As the children discover the discrepancies, there will be many questions and comments. Refrain from trying to fix the problem and help them experience what is happening. Remember this is meant to be a simulation.
6. Take notes of comments made.
7. After all are served have a student from each group read their ticket.
8. Let the student know that you will gather the next day to discuss the lunch at a de-briefing gathering (next morning if possible). Encourage them to talk with their parents about the experience.

The Debriefing:

It is best to debrief the day after the World Sits Down to Lunch, allowing the students to share and process without extra emotion.

1. Have one person from each group to describe their lunch and share about the experience.
2. Consider using the following debrief questions or writing your own. Try to get a perspective from each group. This is a time for listening and processing observations.

Sample debrief questions and script:

- Share how you felt when you were eating?

- If you wanted more food were you able to get it?

- What did you think after lunch yesterday?

- Did you share the experience with your parents or others? What did you say to them about it?

- What did you think about the group in the world that you were apart of before this activity? Did your thoughts change?

We wanted to do this activity with you to show you the real-life situations of people in our world, and to show you the majority of people are concerned about the things you were yesterday, EVERY DAY.

(Ask them not to share people’s names, just describe the situation)

Now in the real world how many of you have seen someone that has more than enough?

      How did you know?

How many of you have seen someone that has just enough?

       How did you know?

How many of you have seen someone without enough?

       How did you know?

What do you notice about the size of these groups of people?

Why do you think the people that have almost nothing are the largest group?

How would you make the “Lunch” more fair?

In our global village, our world, there are 2.2 billion children and nearly half do not have enough. As you learned many of these children do not have enough food and cannot go to school. They are kids just like you who play games and have dreams about what they want to do when they grow up.

Because we are all in a big village together, we are going to look at ways we help other kids in our global village.

I would like to ask that each of you write down one idea on how to help children who do not have enough, children who live in other parts of the world where they can’t go to school, or don’t have clean drinking water, or because of droughts are no longer able to grow food. We are going to keep the ideas in this special box.

If time permits, read If the World Were a Village: A Book about the World’s People by David Smith (Author), Shelagh Armstrong (Illustrator)

EDUCATION Simulations and speakers, learning about issues impacting the world’s children.

In each part of the project (recipe), children will be more engaged if their ideas are driving the next step.

1.    Group student’s comments cards into issue areas. The cards will inform which simulations are selected. The simulations will provide education about the interconnectedness of the world.

2.    Select 4 simulations and/or speakers on the topics, 60 to 90 minutes per week.

3.    Allow time for reflection questions at the end of each simulation.

Many of the simulations used in the pilot project came from a book for teachers, visit www.facingthefuture.org to for a huge list of downloadable simulations or to order the book. Many of these simulations can be adapted for younger children. It is recommended to try the simulation out on your own child first; they are the best critics.

The education simulation was developed by the Global Campaign for Education and can be found at http://www.netaid.org/act_now/gce/gce/2005/worldclass_gce.html. It was the best of the simulations. Some of the other simulations could have used more than the hour of time we had allotted. (The MAU recipe for these simulations can be found in Appendix ___.)

 

MAU sample simulation recipe:

 

Understanding our world (week 1)

 

A.    How Big is 6.5 Billion? Start with a teaspoon of rice, then a yogurt container full, and through a series of estimations and calculations, you will find out how many stacked yogurt containers it will take to get to 6.5 billion grains of rice (the world’s population). We adapted the original recipe from 1 billion to 6.5 billion (the world’s population) and from gallons to yogurt containers (something more familiar to 4^th graders). See adapted recipe in Simulations file folder.

Other facts on the difference between a million and a billion:

• It takes 23 days non-stop to count to one million and 95 years to count to one billion, a huge difference.
• It’s 93 million miles from the earth to the sun, it would take 35 ROUND trips to the sun to get to 6.5 billion miles.
• The number of heartbeats in an average life of 76 years is 2.2 billion, 3 lifetimes of heartbeats to get to 6.5 billion

B.    How wide are our connections? A simple but fun exercise to find out how many countries we come in contact with in a day. Read each other’s shirt tags. The outcome will be surprising. Build a list and invite students to add to the list as they find products at home from other countries.

C.    What are the Millennium Development Goals?

Resources/Ecological Footprint/Water (week 2):

A.    Now Hear This! See and hear a comparison of an average US citizen’s and sub-Saharan African citizen’s Ecological Footprint through a demonstration in which popcorn kernels are poured into a metal pan (10 kernels for Sub-Saharan Africa, 2 cups for a person living in the U.S. Discuss the ecological footprint (the resources we use to support our everyday life) of an average U.S. citizen is 24 acres or 24 football fields, while an average person in India uses 2 acres.

Discussion questions: If everyone one had a footprint the size of a person in North America, we would need 4 planets. How do we bring the two footprints into closer balance?

B.    Every Drop Counts! A Water Trivia game and a short demonstration of how much of the Earth’s water is available for human and other species’ needs.

TAKE HOME activity to do before the class meeting: Give each student a water audit to bring home to calculate their water usage. 

Water trivia game: What percentage of the earth’s water is available for people to use? What percent of his/her income is spent on drinking water in the US and in Honduras? What percent of the human body is comprised of water?

Activity: Take a gallon of water (representing all the earth’s water) and measure the amount of fresh water on earth (2.5% or 3 tablespoons) and then removed what’s trapped in glaciers (70% of that or 2 tablespoons) leaving less that 1 percent of the Earth’s total water supply for human needs.

Discussion questions: When the audits have been returned compare the amounts that people used.

Outcome: the students recognize the value of fresh water.

 

Resouces/Energy Use (week 3):

 

A.    Fueling the Future. Students compare energy use and CO2 emissions by sector in the United States, China and Italy. Start by discussing a couple of products and the process of making that product from raw material to when it gets to us. Explore the type and amount of energy we use day to day.

 

Conclude exercise by brainstorming energy conservation ideas.

If every household replaced just three 60-watt incandescent light bulbs with CFLs, we would reduce as much pollution as if we took 3.5 million cars off the roads!

Note: This exercise covered the role of world leaders to reduce CO2 emissions. Consider adapting this recipe or finding another as it is a bit complicated.

Resources for finding information on energy conservation:

www.stopglobalwarming.org

www.environmentaldefense.org

Debrief questions

Education (week 4):

 

1. Time for School 2003: This video contains segments profiled seven children in seven countries-Afghanistan, Benin, Brazil, India, Japan, Kenya, and Romania-as they started their first year of school. A follow-up video has been done and can be found at: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/shows/school2/video.html 

Our school choose the stories of a 10 year old boy in Kenya and a 10 year old child in Afghanistan. Their endearing personalities and stories brought the importance of education to life for the students. Each child was now going to class after significant struggle and shared how important it was for their future to go to school. Shown on a snowy day when most of the class would rather have been at home enjoying a snow day, the class had the opportunity to see the importance of school through other children’s eyes, putting a human face on the issue.

1. ****World Class – Grab Bag! This game was released in 2003 and has been played by over 50,000 students to rave reviews. Each student receives an identity of a child in Tamil Nadu, India and learns of their challenges in gaining access to education. Throughout the game students are either in or out of school based on their life circumstances all trying to achieve enough school years to reach their dream. The students developed empathy for the struggles that children without resources and oftentimes girls go through in other countries.  

The game can be purchased or downloaded for free at http://www.netaid.org/act_now/gce/gce/2005/worldclass_gce.html. 

 

Speakers:

 

Inviting speakers who are doing interesting projects globally is another way to put a face on an issue. Both of the speakers for the pilot project spoke to raising money as well as raising awareness.

Christiane Leitinger from the Pennies for Peace Project(www.penniesforpeace.org): A project of the Central Asia Institute (CAI) Pennies for Peace educates American children about the world beyond their experience and shows them that they can make a positive impact on a global scale, one penny at a time. P4P believes that our best hope for a peaceful and prosperous world lies in the education of all the world’s children. Christiane shared the work of Greg Mortenson, a mountain climber who has ended up building 58 schools for children in Pakistan and Afghanistan. His book “Three Cups of Tea” is a wonderful adventure story that’s full of hope and inspiration. The book on take is great for a family car trip.

Ana Dodson, A 15-year-old student from Evergreen, CO, founded Peruvian Hearts (www.peruvianhearts.org). She was recently named Youth Ambassador for the Stop Child Poverty Campaign. She was adopted from Peru and later returned with her parents to visit her birth country. She decided to start an organization to help children by giving them the additional resources needed to provide them with an environment which protects and nurtures them physically, emotionally, spiritually and educationally.

ACTION:

Choosing an action area:

 

After completing the simulations, it’s time to refresh what they have learned. Invite 2 students to speak to each issue area. Why should the class take action on “getting all children in school by the year 2015” or “bringing clean drinking water to impoverished nations” or “curbing global warming”. From this point forward the children will begin to take leadership roles. The activities will be unique for each project. The following outlines how the students at Flatirons Elementary chose to take action. The met in small groups at lunchtime for 3 weeks. Some students became so involved that they met many additional times.

Flatirons Elementary School:

The class chose to focus their efforts on doing their part to help get 80 million children into school by the year 2015 (Millennium Goal #2). Water was a close second.

We had discussed the Millennium Development Goals, 8 goals that all of the world leaders have agreed upon and are working to achieve by the year 2015. The second goal is to achieve basic universal education, all children in primary school by the year 2015. The children where charged with the task of raising awareness in their community and meeting to discuss this objective with their decision makers in this case aides to their US Senators). The students divided into groups and each group with the help of parent volunteers decided how to best accomplish their area.  The groups were: Document/Photography, Media, Inviting/Acknowledgement, Action Planning and Action Visual Presentation. The students planned for two public events: the Global Kids Unite 4^th Grade Concert and a presentation for their Members of Congress (aides of two US Senators).

Inviting the school community:

The Action Planning team chose to participate in the JOIN UP campaign (www.sendmyfriend.org). The team presented the project to each of the classes at their school and invited each student to make a paper doll to add to a paper chain that would be sent along with a giant canvas letter to Chancellor Angela Merkal, head of Germany, the G8 and the European Union this year. The also invited the Concert attendees (their families) to sign the banner and color a paper doll.

Building a presentation:

 

The presentation team gathered the facts and figures, learning to build power point slides and join into a presentation with animation and catchy titles.

Media:

 

The media team created the key message, then wrote a press release for local newspapers and a letter to the editor about their project. The event was announced in one local paper, and the letter to the editor was published in another paper.

 

The Choir Concert (engaging their community):

 

The school music teacher selected the songs and rehearsed for a few months. The songs were interweaved with GKU’s PowerPoint presentation. The paper doll chains were hung around the risers as decorations. The action team worked at the action table invited families to take action. See video.

 

Meeting the Members of Congress (their aides):

 

A few assigned students greeted the aides and casually told them of their year long project and invited them to color paper dolls, as the rest of the class set up.  The agenda looked like this:

• PowerPoint presentation
• Singing
• Giving the aides a letter to their boss, signed by each student in many colors
• Questions facilitated by one of the students (3 prepared questions sent to the aides previously, and them many other questions from the students.

(add addition questions and quote from Matt.)

 

 

 

A.C.E. Acknowledge. Celebrate. Evaluate.

 

Gather in a big circle to acknowledge all the work accomplished by the class and specifically share comments about who contributed. Evaluate: Talk about what worked, what could be improved upon.

See video. Celebrate with a Pizza lunch (optional but great).

Be sure to get a really great photo.

 

Resources/Websites:

Simulation recipes:

 

School curriculum:

 

Curriculum based (visit www.bvsd.org for the complete school curriculum):

 

Because we would be using weekly class time to do this project, we worked to ensure that each activity support the 4^th grade curriculum. Global Kids Unite supports social studies, math, science and language arts curriculum in the following ways:

Social Studies: The project supports learning in Civics: What government is and what it does? Why we need government? What are a citizen’s rights and responsibilities? What is a democracy? And Economics: What is a good and service? What is scarcity? How are we all interdependent?

Math: We estimated all the way to 6.5 billion (the world’s population). We’ve worked with fractions, decimals and percentages in calculating how much of the earth’s water is drinkable, our ecological footprint, and our resource consumption. 

Science: Our activities supported Earth/space Concept II. Water cycles through the environment and Fifth Grade Concepts I. Water cycles through the environment and II. Humans impact their environment.  Although the simulations that touched on the 5^th grade curriculum areas could be addressed in 5^th grade in the future, it gave the children a better understanding of our interconnectedness to others around the globe.

Language Arts: The work the students are doing in the ACTION phase of the project will support learning in Standard Areas #2, #4, and #5, including using electronic media to locate information, applying strategies to select, organize and investigate a topic, and compiling information and choosing appropriate presentation (e.g. multimedia, display board, written report, models, written and oral presentations). 

List of Frequently Asked Questions: