Haumea Ecoversity

I am very much looking forward to speaking at next week’s Teaching for Transformation: Global Citizenship in Higher Education in Dublin, hosted by AfrI* (Action from Ireland) for lecturers, academic staff, and management in Irish Higher Education Institutions.

In Ireland, Global Citizenship Education is already a well-recognised and important field, and my Earth Charter ESD training offers a complementary framework that deepens its ethical and ecological dimension.

Free Bookings, Lunch Provided are by Eventbrite here:
Wednesday, April 29  •  10:30 AM – 2:30 PM, Carmelite Community Centre Dublin 2, Dublin – lecturers, academics, Higher Education Staff

I was delighted to receive my invitation from AfrI coordinator Katie Martin, following my attendance at the moving local AfrI co-hosted event in Carlow, the county where I live, during the 14th Féile na Beatha | Carlow’s Spring Festival of Living. The event included a moving commemoration through song with the wonderful eco-song facilitator and researcher https://fullcirclechange.ie/about/biography/Rachel Dempsey and testimony from Gaza with photographer and senior TED Fellow Eman Mohammed, and a remembrance of the over 3,000 people buried and forcibly displaced during An Gorta Mór, the Great Irish Famine at the former site of the Carlow workhouse, now part of the grounds of Carlow South East Technological University (SETU) campus. It felt especially meaningful that this invitation grew out of a local gathering rooted in connections with community, place and care, because these are precisely the qualities that education for transformation so urgently needs.

In my lecture, I will be sharing how Earth Charter ESD training offers one way of making this connection. The Earth Charter provides a clear and practical ethical framework for Education for Sustainable Development, rooted in respect for the community of life, ecological integrity, social justice, democracy, and peace. It invites educators and institutions to move beyond awareness-raising and toward transformative learning that supports responsibility, reflection, and action. (I will also be sharing the recent Irish translation of the Earth CHarter, by Phoebe Cope, who attended the Carlow Gaeilscoil. This translation was presented at the 25th Earth Charter celebrations, at The Peace Palace, The Hague, Netherlands, last year).

What I find especially valuable is the complementarity between Earth Charter ESD and Global Citizenship Education (GCE). The Earth Charter provides a well-recognised foundational, integrated ecological, and values-based perspective: a guiding vision and set of principles for a wiser, more compassionate ecological civilisation. Global Citizenship Education, meanwhile, helps us engage with questions of identity, solidarity, human rights, and participation in a connected world.
Together, they support a whole-of-education ecological worldview for all learners and citizens, one that foregrounds care and responsibility for the community of life, ecological integrity, social justice, democracy, and peace. The Earth Charter offers educators an ecological ethics approach that complements GCE in the service of sustainable development and a more expansive educational purpose.

For higher education in Ireland, this conversation matters because universities and colleges are being called to lead not only in knowledge creation, but also in developing the ecological ethical fluency needed to shape just, equitable, sustainable, and intergenerationally wiser future-oriented societies. The Earth Charter ESD approach supports that mission by encouraging ecological vision, principled transformative learning, inclusive practice, and creative critical reflection for meaningful action.

Acknowledgements

My grateful thanks to Rachel Dempsey and Clare O’Grady Walshe for warmly inviting me to the Carlow Afri – SETU Féile na Beatha | Carlow’s Spring Festival of Living, where I met AfrI Co-ordinator Katie Martin. What an incredibly moving event.

AfrI’s Vision: “Afri’s vision is of a more peaceful, equal and sustainable world. We seek to inform debate, influence policy and practice and effect change in Ireland and internationally on issues of human rights, peace, the climate crisis, and global justice. Afri is guided by the primary goal of the UN Charter: “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”.

My thanks also to the Irish Arts Council for their 2020 Professional Development Award, which supported my Earth Charter ESD Educator Accreditation. This fostered important Irish Earth Charter ESD connections, and mentoring for me,with Earth Charter International ESD Associated Educators connected with the UN University of Peace, Costa Rica, including Chair of Earth Charter Dr Sam Crowell, Dr Peter Blaze Corcoran, Michael Bracken, Chair of the Board of Directors, for Earth Charter International, Dr Mary Evelyn Tucker (former Earth Charter Council Member) and Dr John Grimm (who have all visited Ireland recently) and CEO of Earth Charter International Dr Mirian Vilela, Member of the Club of Rome) which I have shared with Haumea Ecoversity learning leaders.