6th Session – Community of Practice for Climate-Resilient and Climate-Conscious Education

Community of Practice for  climate-resilient and climate-conscious education

The Global Schools Forum launched a Community of Practice for Climate-Resilient and Climate-Conscious Education. Guided by the “Surviving (Receiver) & Thriving (Responder)” framework, this CoP focuses on practical, low-cost solutions from practitioners on the front lines. Structured in action-oriented sprints, we will build a repository of actionable resources, amplify a unified advocacy voice for future COPs, and serve as a strategic bridge to funders and policymakers.

Over five sessions, we have heard profound work from across this network. PEAS turning schools into climate-resilient hubs in Uganda and Zambia. Link Education embedding Disaster Risk Management into government School Improvement Plans in Malawi and Ethiopia. Climate Class Connection’s Climate Baithaks shifting power dynamics in Pakistan. CMADI’s mangrove living classrooms in the Niger Delta. Earth Warriors growing early agency from age three. UNESCO mapping the global architecture that holds it all.

The challenge many of us share is, rich learning, but it is sometimes hard to filter and apply to our own context. The next gathering is designed as a workshop. In 90 minutes together, we want to give each of us the space — and a tool — to make sense of what we have heard against the contexts we actually work in.

We will work with a simple thinking framework, drawn from the journey so far, that invites each of us to examine our own work through five lenses: positionality — the kind of organisation we are and where we hold control or influence; leverage points — where we begin, and what is possible at the school level versus at scale; root causes versus symptoms — whether we are addressing surface issues or the deeper economic, social and political dimensions of climate in our context; level of intervention — whether we are targeting structures, mindsets, processes or behaviours; and available opportunities — what we already have to build on, and what we still need to create.

The patterns and challenges that come up across the room will also feed our wider thinking, including the development of a Practice Brief on climate action for school leaders and the collective voice we are building on this work.

This community thrives on the active participation of its members. Whether you come to listen, to share, or to lead, your voice matters.