LWC Training Teachers to run mock UN COP Conferences with students

The Liverpool World Centre hosted a teachers’ workshop at Squash [a local social enterprise café and garden in Liverpool] where we shared some of the free resources available to schools. The aim was to help them run in school COP style conferences.  As part of this fun packed afternoon teachers took part in some active sessions where we modelled school learning activities form the Climate Action Guide.

We invited Kelly Mundy from Oxfam to speak about the impact of the climate emergency around the world and in particular the fact that ‘more than 44 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance in Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya and South Sudan and over 28 million people are facing severe levels of hunger.’[ Oxfam https://www.oxfam.org/en/what-we-do/emergencies/climate-and-food-crisis-east-and-central-africa]. The problems being experienced are impacting the lives of many families with children. They are facing a rapidly changing climate characterized by erratic rains in the Horn, East, Central Africa where there has been a prolonged serious drought since 2021. There is so much evidence of the climate emergency impacting many lives and often causing displacement as people move in search of water and pasture.

Teachers were encouraged to use the resources from the I Can project as a way of including climate education on the school curriculum. The teachers were impressed with the active learning strategies and were keen to take the resources such as the briefing papers for a mock COP back into their schools to see their classroom impact. We look forward to hearing how this goes. Jacquie Ayre Global Learning Education Officer LWC