Who We Are
The Global Goals Centre is a UK based education charity creating exciting and engaging experiences that inspire learning and action on climate and equality in our everyday lives. We are working to create the world’s first Education and Visitor Centre inspired by the UN Global Goals.
These Goals are the closest thing we’ve ever had to a world plan with every country signed up to them and more and more businesses say they are working to achieve them. They really demonstrate the interconnectedness of the issues – the strapline 'Leave No-One Behind' is a vital way to ensure equalities and climate action are seen as inextricably linked.
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report highlights how vital it is that more people take action for a greener, fairer future; our approach of engaging people with immersive, creative experiences are more likely to lead to sustained behaviour change than information alone.
Our research with UWE shows how young people are increasingly anxious about climate change and feel disempowered and helpless. Our workshops have enabled them to find their voice and use consumer and collective power to take meaningful action for change – in their schools, families and communities.
17 Goals
The UN has 17 Goals and they can seem a bit overwhelming! Many people don’t know where to start, so we aim to make them highly relevant and give people plenty of affordable and easy ways to make a real difference in their communities. We are creating a valuable online Resource Hub for SDG resources for teachers, businesses and the public. This Hub will enable more people to answer the questions ‘What can I Do?’ by getting ideas for behaviour change, joining community projects and taking action for systems change.
While we continue to seek a venue and capital funding for the Centre, we have 3 active projects to engage and inspire young people and the public to take action for the SDGs. The Bristol 17 campaign is a countdown to the Glasgow climate conference COP26, showcasing 17 local people - nominated by community organisations across the city - who are doing great work towards reaching one of the Goals. The one minute videos are having wide engagement on social media (thousands per video) and are giving voice to some of our marginalised communities and amplifying their calls to action and encouraging people to volunteer in local projects.
As Ben, our hero for Goal 11 said “People are more likely to do something about climate and stuff like that if they hear about it from people in their own communities” – that is so true and is why we are running this campaign.
We hope they are bringing to life some of the key climate and inequality issues and showing the relevance of these issues to our city and our daily lives. We make the Goals more relevant by looking at themes, such as fashion; we all wear clothes, but many people aren’t aware of the social and environmental impacts of fast fashion. We are working with Fashion Revolution, Labour Behind the Label, The Good Wardrobe and Race Equality in Education Group to create a digital experience – Threads - exploring how to bring positive change in the way we make and consume clothes – and do our laundry.
The fashion industry produces 10% of global CO2 emissions and uses 1.5 trillion litres of water annually. Poor working conditions in garment factories are widespread. Plastic-based fabrics release millions of microfibres into our oceans on every wash. But there are solutions! Come with us on an immersive journey to explore how our clothes can be changed for good. This online playful experience will be live in November and we’ll be working with young people in schools to explore the issues further, as fashion is such an important issue at this age.
We are also working with local schools and local refugee creatives on our Refugee Voices installation. This immersive work aims to inspire a more holistic engagement with the complexities of migration in the 21st century and how issues of inequality, climate change and war have a role to play in this, as well as celebrating the cultural gains migration brings to our city.
But, most of all, be inspired and hopeful that a greener, fairer future is possible if we all play our part in our own homes and communities, and it will be so much brighter for us all!
If you’d like to support our work, please do look at our website for ways to get involved, or donate to our projects: https://globalgoalscentre.org/