🎓 The GTSF Pilot: A Learning Journey from Awareness to Action

The GTSF Pilot has been more than a training programme. It has been a shared learning journey that brought together over 400 students from Malaysia, Türkiye, Ukraine, Spain, and Romania to explore how education can actively contribute to a more sustainable, connected, and fairer world.

Over several weeks, participants moved step by step from understanding global challenges to designing concrete, community-based actions aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. Each session built on the previous one, combining theory, reflection, and hands-on learning across diverse cultural and educational contexts.

The journey began with an introduction to Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship, setting a shared foundation. Participants explored the role of educators in addressing today’s interconnected crises and reflected on how sustainability, equity, and global responsibility can be meaningfully embedded in educational practice.

In this first session, we were joined by Amanda Abrom, Director of the Global Schools Program, who shared how Global Schools supports educators and institutions through training, curriculum, and methodologies that bring sustainable development into education — from classrooms to policy levels.

The second session, Thinking Glocally: Connecting Local and Global Perspectives, invited students to look closer to home. Through experiential learning activities such as community walks and small-scale ethnographic research, they analysed how global challenges manifest in their own environments. This module strengthened their ability to connect abstract global issues with everyday realities, reinforcing the idea that local action is inseparable from global responsibility.

The third session focused on Empowering Change through the Action Taking Cycle. Here, reflection turned into action. Participants worked collaboratively to apply the Action Taking Cycle to real sustainability challenges in education, designing and testing action plans aimed at driving change in their communities. The emphasis was on feasibility, impact, and learning through doing, equipping students with the confidence and skills to move from ideas to implementation.

The journey culminated in the Closing Session, where students presented the outcomes of their action-taking projects. These initiatives, rooted in local contexts and developed through collaboration, highlighted the power of partnerships and placed a special focus on SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals. Far from being theoretical exercises, the projects demonstrated how education can generate tangible impact beyond the classroom.

The closing session was further enriched by contributions from María Cortés Puch, Vice President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and Gabriela Méndez, Virtual Exchange and COIL Consultant and Global Learning Advocate (Mexico). Their insights underscored the importance of global cooperation, education, and partnerships in advancing sustainable development.

As a pilot experience, the GTSF Programme has generated valuable insights into how virtual exchange, experiential learning, and collaboration can empower future educators to think globally, act locally, and lead change. This journey does not end here. It lays the groundwork for future editions, deeper partnerships, and the continued integration of sustainability and global citizenship into education.