Published: February 11, 2025, 09:00 GST
Students Lead the Way: The BIG GREEN Legacy Workshop Sparks Intergenerational Dialogue, Inspiring Future Curriculum Design for UAE’s Climate and Environmental Learning
A core principle of the BIG GREEN Legacy is the belief that delivering quality climate education for all must routinely include young people’s perspectives and ideas. This means collecting their perspectives, enabling students to interpret the data and develop their own ideas in response.
This innovative solution to drive change is inspired through a partnership between the UAE Ministry of Education and the Abdulla Al Ghurair Foundation and produced by World’s Largest Lesson and Play Verto.
After collecting the views of 72,0000 students from across the UAE via the BIG GREEN Legacy Survey, a unique intergenerational Action Planning Workshop took place on Tuesday 21st January. Immersed in an inspirational mangrove forest at Casa Mikoko in Umm Al Quwain, students and teachers worked in small groups with curriculum designers from the Ministry of Education and representatives from the Al Ghurair Foundation.
Eight different schools attended bringing student representatives from:
- Dubai GEM Private School
- Al Mawakeb School Al Khawaneej
- Al Diyafah High School
- Al Rahba Common School for Girls
- DESS College
- Bilingual French International School
- Alhudaibah Cycle 3 Girls
- Lycée Francis International AFLEC Dubai
The workshop day was facilitated by Susanne Fischer from the Arbor School and began with students and adults working together to explore the data and generate questions about it. Next, the groups moved around the different tables, understanding and exploring each of the different insights generated from the data.
In the afternoon, the focus was on generating actionable solutions to how the UAE education system could best respond to the data and insights shared. Student representatives openly shared their views and ideas, covering areas such as learning resources; frequency of learning; opportunities to take action; social media; reward and recognition.
The intergenerational working groups generated over 150 different ideas on how education could change.
Following this workshop, Ministry of Education curriculum developers and Al Ghurair Foundation programme leads moved to immediate action with two days of meetings to create an actionable plan that will be included in the inaugural BIG GREEN Legacy report.