Development Perspectives

BACKGROUND

Development Perspectives is an independent Development Education non-governmental organisation based in Drogheda, Co. Louth whose mission is to contribute to lessening poverty, inequality and climate change through transformative education and active global citizenship. Our work explores, examines and acts upon a range of issues and challenges that face our world.

Development Perspectives recognises the importance of learning from different local and global perspectives. Acknowledging the value that emotional investment has on meaningful engagement, experiential learning plays an important role in all our programmes.

CURRENT PROJECTS

Saolta is a new Development Education strategic partnership programme for the Adult and Community Education sector in Ireland. Development Perspectives is the lead partner in the consortium, which includes Aontas, Concern Worldwide, Irish Rural Link and the Adult and Community Education Department of Maynooth University.

Saolta is an Irish word that translates to ‘Worldly Wise’. The programme will target Adult and Community Education workers in a variety of ways including interactive national workshops with Further Education Institutions, Public Participation Networks and engage with the Community Education Network established by AONTAS.

Other facets of the programme will involve coaching and mentoring, webinars, networking meetings along with the production of a library of resources and research.

One key facet of Saolta is the SDG Advocate training which offers active citizens an opportunity to represent their community, by becoming one of Ireland’s positive changemakers. The eight-month training course will allow the advocates to deepen their understanding of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, represent the project internationally and lead transformative change in Ireland. The chosen participants will travel to Vietnam or Tanzania for 2 weeks for a work/study visit that will afford an invaluable chance to experience first-hand perspectives and challenges that people face in a different global context.

Development Perspectives' other programmes include STIRE (Supporting the Integration of the Resettled), a pan-European project aimed at fostering cooperation and partnership between resettled migrants, asylum seekers, refugees and their respective host communities in Ireland, SDGchallenge Schools, aimed at increasing the capacity of schools to raise awareness and action of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and DPTV documentaries which explore issues affecting our communities from a local and global perspective.

Throughout 2020 Development Perspectives remained as busy as ever hosting a series of online workshops and webinars aimed at community education practitioners across Ireland. The focus of these webinars has included skills for navigating the media and information landscapes, the global perspective on refugee integration, and the importance of giving a clear and accurate representation of refugees and asylum seekers in the media and a critical look at education from the perspective of Empowerment and Emancipation with regard to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

From these online events the idea for ‘Hear the World Differently’ was conceived, a series of podcasts created from recordings of workshops and webinars which have been available at https://www.developmentperspectives.ie/podcast, iTunes and Spotify.

Find our more about the work of Development Perspectives at www.developmentperspectives.ie 

Sign up to the SDGchallenge and receive monthly information packs about the Sustainable Development Goals: www.developmentperspectives.ie/SDGChallenge 

This project has finished - Development Perspectives is also working on a new project under the EU’s Erasmus programme. Games for the Goals will explore how youth workers, trainers, global educators etc. can explore the Sustainable Development Goals through gamification.