Imagine if every year, we could enable thousands of school children and local people to be fully aware of the issues facing our planet and have the passion, knowledge and problem-solving capacity to help bring an end to poverty, inequality and climate change?

This is what we aim to do by setting up a Global Goals Centre, an immersive Education Centre in Bristol based on the Sustainable Development Goals. Groups would move through a series of immersive and interactive scenarios to increase understanding and promote behaviour and attitude change. So, for example, they might start in a clothing factory in Bangladesh;the group meets the people there, maybe children are working. They make a virtual T-shirt using a game, and get penalised for mistakes, which means they can’t feed their family at the end of the day.

Another group could goto a Fairtrade coffee plantation in Nicaragua which Bristol is twinned with –they become the Fairtrade co-operative and have to make a decision how to spend their premium money –they have climate change challenges but also need to pay for education and health care.

Another group may have a plastic bottle and follow its journey into the sea and look at the impact on wildlife, maybe through virtual reality. At least one scenario would be a local one –balancing the needs of the city for water, food and housing against climate change and equality needs.

Each of these scenarios would also showcase many wonderful and innovative solutions that are happening both locally and in the global south, to inspire and inform, and provide a hopeful narrative to counteract the negative news we are fed each day. And each scene would have an Ideas Tank for each group to input how they would change this situation and actions that they/their school/their community can do to make it better.

This can then be emailed or messaged to them or their school so they remember what they committed to do, to try to ensure impacts beyond the visit.We need partners to enable us to bring this innovative Centre to life. This is a collaborative project for the city and the West of England region, part of Bristol’s One City Plan and an embodiment of Bristol City of Hope.

Jenny Foster, Project Lead, Global Goals Centre

jenny a_t globalgoalscentre d_o_t org
07970-878337
www.globalgoalscentre.org
Twitter: @bristolggc
FB: Global Goals Centre