Institute of Global Responsibility (IGO) works to increase the quality of development education in Poland through training workshops, public discussions and publications.

Raising awareness of the Code of Conduct On Images And Messages relating to the South is one of the most important parts of our work. The Code of Conduct offers a set of guiding principles that assist practitioners in their efforts to communicate the realities of the South and the organisations’ programmes and values in a coherent and balanced way .

To start this process in Poland we have published a Manual for teachers and NGOs that facilitates the implementation of the Code of Conduct in development education in schools and public communication. Our publication and a number of follow-up meetings caused a significant amount of interest among Polish NGOs and teachers. Many educators in Poland now use the Manual in designing and implementing their educational projects.

You can learn more about the Code at DEEEP web site.

We care about the education system in Poland. IGO contributes to the multistakeholder consensus on development education, which is a first step towards developing a national strategy on global education. The consensus is the followup to the successful cooperation among NGOs to introduce global dimension in the new school curriculum in 2008. Representatives of IGO facilitated the working group on quality of development education during the major national conference on global education that took part in Warsaw in 2009.

Development Education in schools

IGO aims to mobilise schools in Poland for the MDG agenda. We recommend and support teachers in four types of actions: improving school responsibility towards developing countries through promotion of ethical consumption (e.g. with regard to fair trade and climate change), demanding accountability from decision makers (e.g. fulfilling aid commitments to Africa, fairer trade deals), the facilitation of direct contact with schools in the Southern countries (as a means to explore realities of the South and create strong, mutually beneficial links) and improving the quality of the schools’ charity actions.

IGO trained teachers from schools in Warsaw and small towns in the surrounding region to conduct high quality development education and to facilitate students’ actions within the framework of the project entitled Facilitators of Youth Initiatives for Global Responsibility.

IGO launched its awareness raising work in 2007. Since that time we have been focusing on reasearch and advocacy and development education. Research and dialogue with decision makers and civil society are the main pillars of the IGO’s advocacy programme. Our development education strategy focuses on high quality work with schools, teachers and other educators.