SUAS Educational Development

BACKGROUND

SUAS believes that Literacy changes everything. Our story began in 2002 with our founder’s vision to address educational disadvantage and the collective energy of a determined group of supporters, volunteers and staff. Since then, we’ve directly supported over 12,000 children in India, Zambia and Kenya and trained over 1,200 Suas volunteers to work as teaching assistants in some of the worlds most marginalised, under-resourced communities. Here in Ireland, we’ve helped over 3,300 children from disadvantaged communities to improve their literacy skills and we’ve trained over 4,500 volunteer mentors to support them.

CURRENT PROJECTS

STAND was set up in 2014 in response to the desire amongst third level students in Ireland to learn more about global issues and take action.

STAND celebrates the power of ordinary people to change the world. With us, you can share your ideas about standing up for justice and equality, learn more about global issues, and find out what you can do to take positive action. Learn more about our programmes over at www.stand.ie.

16,300 young people engaged with STAND activities in 2018, with activities delivered in 7 third level institutions across Ireland. Key activities included: the 8x8 Festival, the Global Issues Courses, the Ideas Collective, the Volunteer Programme and the STAND on Campus Programme.

The 8x8 Festival took place from September 24th to November 9th on eight campuses around the country, and consisted of an outdoor photographic exhibition and supporting learning events and activities on each campus. It used a mix of powerful photographs and infographics to highlight issues of discrimination around the world and reach an estimated 16,081 students.

In 2018 STAND also ran 7 Global Issues Courses with 91 participants on 6 major campuses. The courses provided an introduction to global justice issues for students from different academic backgrounds and ran once a week for seven weeks on each campus.

The Ideas Collective was open to students and recent graduates based in Ireland with ideas for social or environmental action. We were especially interested to support projects that had a strong global dimension and tackled issues of inequality and discrimination. In total 26 students developed their ideas for action in 2018.

Our International Volunteer Programme supported 83 volunteers to work as teaching assistants in disadvantaged schools in India and Zambia. Over the course of eight months volunteers developed their knowledge and understanding of global issues and the impact of these issues on local communities. Volunteers also identified how they can take action for change going forward.

Finally, the STAND on Campus Programme supported 26 students from 6 universities around Ireland to build their capacity to organise global citizenship-themed events on their campuses. Training workshops took place both before and after the events in autumn 2018 to help students to plan the events and to reflect on their learning and next steps afterwards.