From Education to Action: Humanitarian focused Action Projects with the Red Cross

There is tremendous value in the use of active methodologies for teaching humanitarian and citizenship issues.

Such methodologies are central to the Red Cross' educational programmes. This seminar will explore planning, organising and running an action project, with a global / humanitarian theme.

It will illustrate the creative and practical opportunities that such projects allow for both pupils and teachers.

Action projects run by teachers working in partnership with the Red Cross over the past academic year will be showcased and will demonstrate how the four capacities outlined in A Curriculum for Excellence can be achieved.

Inline with the aims of the Curriculum the action project encourages those working in education to plan and act in new ways.

Experiential learning is central to the methodologies employed and thus ensures that pupils experience learning that will contribute to their personal development and challenge their views and perceptions through participative tasks.

For educationalists who wish to explore this method of working, it will be demonstrated that this can be as straightforward as integrating an action project into classroom practice or can range in complexity to a whole school approach.

Sally Dempsey is a Humanitarian Educator with the British Red Cross in Scotland. As such, she develops and delivers training in Humanitarian Education to teachers and student teachers through the Red Cross CPD and ITE project.

Sally has worked internationally, teaching English and alongside her professional work is actively involved in the management of the charity Tenteleni – which run educational projects assisting in the townships schools of South Africa and Swaziland. Sally is an executive committee member of IDEAS and part of the editorial team for STRIDE.