Global Connect

Global Connect is a fun and interactive education project by WDM Scotland that helps people learn about the connection between local issues and the global problems of climate change, unfair trade, and poverty - and how to do something positive about them! We have just produced a short video about Global Connect, including interviews with some of the participants: please have a look and "Like" it!

This year we are focussing on working with a group of people who are either homeless or vulnerable to homelessness in partnership with the Bethany Christian Trust. There is a regular discussion and action group on Wednesdays. We have looked at a wide variety of issues and have a sizeable pool of participants. One achievement the group is proud of was to lobby Bethany itself to become a Fair Trade organisation - after discussions amongst the staff this was agreed. The discussion group held a very successful launch ceremony with a quiz, information, snacks and nibbles.

One group member decided to do something about sectarianism in Scottish football by writing and recording a song. You can listen to it here.

In the past years we have worked with diverse groups including the Bethany Christian Trust's Men's Group, Scottish Borders Environment Project, Drummond Community High School, Transition Support Scotland, St Paul's and St. George's Church, Edinburgh. We ran workshops in the Scottish Borders, in Edinburgh and in Leith and covered at a multitude of issues from litter to global warming, from neighbourliness to international relations. We have had radio interviews on Leith FM, articles in the Bugle magazine (written by Bethany service users) and organised a lobby of MSPs. Global Connect linked in with the local community in Wester Hailes to hold film clubs and monthly workshops.  Reel lives continues to show films on interesting global topics, for further details please contact the WHALE Arts education officer. We also work from time-to-time with the Take One Action Film Festival. At last year's screening of the film Hunger! we used a simple activity to illustrate the impacts of food speculation. Further information and files to download to use it yourself are here.

Very importantly as well as investigating and discussing issues we also examine what we can do about them and how to do it - practical campaigning and organising skills.

A brief report of Global Connect in 2010-11 can be found here (or you can download a PDF version from the bottom of this page).

What we did

How we did it

What participants said about it

At last year's screening of the film Hunger! we used a simple activity to illustrate the impacts of food speculation. Further information and files to download to use it yourself are here.

For more information on the Global Connect project contact our education officer