DISCUSSION: Town twinning gives schools ‘food for thought’
Jane Freeland, who convenes NSC’s Education Working Group, talked to Claire Plumb about how an interactive project led by the Leicester Masaya Link Group (LMLG) is helping British children learn about global citizenship. Claire recently led a Leicester City Council delegation to Masaya.
As part of our education campaign, the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign (NSC) and town twinning groups have been discussing how to make more strategic use of the experience of years of solidarity with municipalities and communities in Nicaragua. The insights of this work into Nicaraguan daily life illuminate more vividly than any abstract analysis how Nicaragua’s problems derive from global systems involving us all. LMLG’s Food for Thought programme is an innovative example of how solidarity links can be built which draw on the experiences of both communities and are truly reciprocal.
The programme is rooted in LMLG’s solidarity work with Masaya, including activities with schools – “development in practice” as Claire puts it – and is a two-way exchange that is enlivening “development education” in Leicester. Based on case studies “that reflect the voices and experiences of our partners”, Food for Thought is “an interactive approach to the global citizenship element of primary school education”.
The starting point is a Powerpoint “tour” of Masaya, where children meet Miguel and his family and friends, visit the village market and see the countryside around his home. Then, through photos, artefacts and visits to the University of Leicester’s Botanic Garden, pupils explore how plants grow in Nicaragua’s tropical climate, and trace produce we find in our shops from the farmer’s field to the market and into family budgets.
Back at school, they make plant-based products to sell in “a bustling recreation of a Nicaraguan market”, to experience how a local economy works. Finally, they talk about how their own lives and Miguel’s are linked through international trade and fair trade. “What’s particularly interesting is how quickly children spot similarities between Nicaraguan lives and their own, and how this enhances discussion of their differences,” says Clare. “So the experience can also make for very rounded thinking about diversity within the UK.”
Developed and tested with funding from the Department for International Development for education projects that “bring the world into the classroom”, this year sees delivery of the first “paying version”. LMLG is exploring how to extend the principle into formats for different educational levels and wider UK use. That would mean each town exploring how to adapt the approach to its local commitments and resources. As Claire points out, “This kind of work can be key for councils in delivering on national and local agendas like global education and social cohesion.”
She explains how a focus for the recent LMLG delegation to Masaya was “to demonstrate to city councillors how powerfully an active link can bring these issues alive”. Participants met both the current Masaya municipal council and prospective candidates to discuss the link and the importance of making it reciprocal. The visit also feeds into LMLG’s work to help the city council draw more strategically on the work of Leicester’s other twinnings with cities in India, China, Germany and Bulgaria.
Although twinning groups have different interests, purposes and strengths, they all aim to bring their cities together across barriers of different kinds, and they can raise their impact by working together, and sharing resources and perspectives. This is precisely the principle NSC seeks to explore: how can Nicaraguan town twinning groups draw mutual strength from our single strengths so that the UK can hear the many voices of Nicaragua and learn from them?
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