Following on from last year’s successful forum, our Education team is offering a 2024 series of Step up to the World|Tū maia ki te Ao forums on global citizenship education around New Zealand. The first of the free workshops will be held at The Pā, Waikato University, on Friday 23 February, featuring:

Workshop 1: The Polynesian Panther Legacy Trust –  ‘Our Living Room’

This workshop focuses on the activism of Auckland’s 1970s Polynesian Panthers and their ‘three-point’ philosophy: peaceful resistance, Pacific empowerment and educating Aotearoa New Zealand about persistent systemic racism. The workshop aims to support teachers in naming, negotiating and navigating racism in schools.

Workshop 2: Understanding global issues from a social justice perspective (Rose Hipkins, Pauline Waiti, Stephen Ross and Merimeri Anania)

Participants will explore how knowledge systems shape our worldviews, and thus our actions and efficacy, in ways that are often invisible to us because they are ‘just natural’. Drawing on themes from the Polynesian Panthers’ story, this workshop provokes us to think about how growing an awareness of knowledge systems can impact on students’ ability to take action as local and global citizens.