Peace and Global Education Begins with Me

By Regie Plana-Alcuaz, CASJ Peace and Global Education Action Group and Nisga’a teacher

All social justice issues intersect with peace and global education. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals include 17 objectives that can be categorized under the different areas of social justice. These remain urgent, universal concerns. How much progress is being made towards these goals? Are we doing all we can to help achieve them?

None of the Sustainable Development Goals can be fully achieved without peace. Everyone should make the effort to educate themselves and others in their orbit about the events occurring in the world around us. Instead of relying on social media to develop pseudo-connections and to access clickbait masquerading as news, we can turn to in-person conversations about local, real-world concerns as a starting point. At the same time, we can continue educating ourselves about relevant international issues using unbiased sources.

The PAGE Action Group members have recently updated the Peace and Global Education Begins with Me posters with new images, quotes, and links to resources and lesson plans. These posters can serve as a springboard for discussion or as a reminder of what we are all working towards.

To order free copies of these and other social justice resources, fill out the BCTF Social Justice Resource Order Form on the BCTF Member Portal.

PEACE and Global Education begins with ME... PEACE

Preserve the planet

I fight because I know that, without water, we cannot live. I do this work for the love of my community, for my granddaughters.

— Reyna Ortiz, environmental activist in El Salvador

bctf.ca/SocialJustice/PAGE and Global Education begins with ME... PEACE

Share with others

And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half the world. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

bctf.ca/SocialJustice/PAGE

PEACEPEACE and Global Education begins with ME...

Listen to understand

The longer we listen to one another—with real attention—the more commonality we will find in all our lives. That is, if we are careful to exchange with one another life stories and not simply opinions.

—Barbara Deming (U.S. author and activist, 1917–1984)

bctf.ca/SocialJustice/PAGE

and Global Education begins with ME... PEACE

Rediscover Solidarity

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

— Audre Lorde, black writer, feminist, womanist, lesbian, and civil rights activist

PEACE and Global Education begins with ME...

Reject violence

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

—Mahatma Gandhi

bctf.ca/SocialJustice/PAGE and Global Education begins with ME... PEACE

Respect all life

The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that’s wrong with the world. — Dr. Paul Farmer, U.N. Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Community-based Medicine and Lessons from Haiti