Over the last decade, Flemish schools have shown a growing interest in the Sustainable Development Goals and building a partnership with a school in Africa, South America or Asia. Their wish is to bring the SDGs and global citizenship competencies into the classroom through a personal relationship with a school in Africa, South America or Asia.
However, these schools often lack the necessary contacts, competences and resources to turn these collaborations into successful and sustainable partnerships. Support from a third party is crucial.
Schools develop sustainable international schoollinks that create a forum for educational and intercultural exchange through which competences of global citizenship are fostered at the level of teachers and learners.
The SchoolLinks programme centres on strengthening teachers, school leaders, and other relevant individuals of the school community to better understand the other’s reality and challenges, and to respond to them in a positive way. Teachers in particular are trained to use the schoollink as an educational tool to stimulate changes in their learners. In 2020 the program added a special focus on climate education through its s-cool-links online exchange platform for teachers globally. The platform supports collaborative learning and climate action, and aims to use education as a strategic tool to battle climate change and increase resilience to climate injustice within future generations.
The programme is built around three pillars:
- Quality support and guidance of the schoollinks so they can successfully evolve into a sustainable partnership
- Effective communication about schoollinks so schools are inspired to either start up a new or strengthen their existing partnerships
- Strengthening teacher capacity on climate education through supporting knowledge exchange and climate actions on the S-Cool-Links platform
