The curriculum is an inspired outcome of the 2022 publication by Dr. John Kurien, "Involving the People - Democratizing the implementation and monitoring of the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication." The report highlights the need for democratizing the implementation and monitoring of the SSF Guidelines at the community level through contextualized participatory assessment tools and mechanisms. The curriculum serves as a medium for raising awareness about the SSF Guidelines through young people's exploration of its themes as reflected in their daily lives growing up in fish-dependent villages. The learning framework contains dynamic youth action and community-based participatory approaches that enable educators to guide their students and learners in monitoring and evaluating the implementation of the SSF Guidelines in their communities, sharing their results as part of Too Big To Ignore's "20 Questions about Small-Scale Fisheries," inviting educators to create profiles of the SSF communities upon the curriculum's completion.  

Applying the essential findings and processes described in the Involving the People report, the SSF Guidelines Curriculum transdisciplinary development team reviewed each paragraph of the guidelines' 13 chapters, highlighting the key takeaways and uncovering the overarching "story" each guideline tells about small-scale fisheries. In parallel, C2C met remotely with educators working in diverse small-scale fishing villages and initiated the co-design process through in-depth interviews. Educators generously offered their time and participation, sharing the specific challenges facing their SSF and the opportunities they foresaw. C2C inquired about the teaching and learning methods educators thought worked best for their local context and any innovative or alternative teaching methods they would be interested in developing new skills, for example, using audiovisual tools in teaching and learning processes. Educators discussed their personal goals as community members and professional goals as teachers, facilitators, and social workers. In addition, C2C learned about the local fishing practices, cultural values, and traditional knowledge that would inform the curriculum's design. 

Together, C2C and educators co-designed a lively collection of lesson plans and enrichment activities that sought to meet the needs of SSF educators and make learning meaningful and relevant for participants through their own investigations and imaginations. C2C and educators employed different pedagogies, learning processes, and strategies within the curriculum's design. These include expeditionary learning, an educational approach that emphasizes hands-on, experiential learning through the use of real-world projects and fieldwork, as well as social-emotional learning (SEL) to help students develop the ability to manage their emotions, set and achieve positive goals, show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions. As SSF are integrated social-ecological systems, C2C also integrated offerings from common world pedagogies, emphasizing the interconnectedness of humans and the natural world. In this approach, education is seen as a way to promote ecological awareness and social responsibility towards non-human beings and the environment.

During IYAFA 2022, Emi Koch, the SSF Guidelines Curriculum Project Director, was awarded a Dalai Lama Fellowship, where she connected with a cohort of fellows with "compassion-in-actions" projects during monthly calls as well as mentors in education and mindfulness practices who offered guidance on the curriculum's process of co-creation. 

From June through December 2022, Coast 2 Coast piloted curriculum dynamics in five SSF communities' public schools along Peru's northern coast, with two indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon and one inland fishing villages in the Andes, engaging over 850 young learners, more than 70 adults learners, and more than 65 teachers. C2C facilitate over 30 new dynamics involving youth action research and participatory audiovisuals and creative mediums such as murals, stop-motion animations, photography, map-making, cyanography, and more for learners to mobilize their knowledge gathered. C2C also facilitate workshops for teachers to share about the curriculum and integrate their insights into the drafted lesson plans and enrichment activities. The in-person pilots resulted in the audiovisual co-creation of two stop-motion animations, seven photography classes, three murals, and two thaumatropes (an optical illusion based on combining two images with movement) workshops. 

Simultaneously, 12 educators from focus groups piloted select activities from each chapter of the SSF Guidelines with their own groups of young learners in Peru, Nigeria, India, and Madagascar, engaging over 60 young learners testing 10 lesson plans.    

C2C also launched a region-wide photography contest calling on students and teachers across Piura to capture what Part 2 of the SSF Guidelines - Responsible Fisheries and Sustainable Development looked like in their built and natural community, capturing images from the local fishing pier, the marketplace, and local kitchens. Through social media, radio interviews, and pitching the contest in local schools, C2C reached almost 20,000 people across the state, raising awareness about IYAFA 2022 and the SSF Guidelines as the structure for the photography contest's call for submissions. While fewer students and teachers submitted their work than C2C had aimed to engage, the participants who did submit their photos and the select few who won first, second, and third place prizes based on their audiovisual pieces reported having a thought-provoking and enriching experience seeing their ordinary SSF communities as extraordinary for their contributions to food security and local livelihoods.  

From mid-December 2022 through February 2023, C2C spent time with focus group educators integrating feedback into the lesson plans and enrichment activities, producing supplementary handouts, gathering resources, and illustrating materials. During this stage, C2C presented the SSF Guidelines Curriculum Project at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego to marine scientists, fisheries researchers, and students, appealing to academics to partner with local nonprofits and educators to get dirt on their white papers, mobilizing knowledge with those who need to apply it the most for their social-ecological well-being. C2C also presented the project at the 4th World Small-Scale Fisheries Congress (4WSFC) for Latin America & Caribbean in Merida, Mexico. With Too Big to Ignore's support, C2C could bring one of the local educators from the focus group in Peru to share their experience and connect with others. C2C gained invaluable feedback from both outreach experiences, connecting with researchers whose work lesson plans simplify for learners to engage with in their local SSF contexts. 

The result is the inaugural SSF Guidelines Curriculum as a learning framework that engages young people (of all ages) to explore, imagine, and mobilize the FAO SSF Guidelines in their dynamic fishing villages as aquatic social-ecological systems and common worlds with non-human beings and elements. By using these guidelines as a framework for the curriculum, local educators can support local youth in thinking critically about their sustainable futures in the context of their own aquatic social-ecological systems. 

After a yearlong co-development process, the SSF Guidelines Curriculum's 1st edition is ready for publication. The SSF Guidelines Curriculum development team is excited to share the participatory project with stakeholders across the FAO's network for feedback and with educators in SSF communities for further piloting and uptake. With a minimum viable product (MVP) to disseminate, C2C would like to work closely with international donors and community-based partners working for sustainable fisheries and quality rural education to envision the project's following stages and next steps. C2C anticipates a "Call for Submissions" from FAO volunteer multistakeholder consultants for feedback on the curriculum 1st edition, the opportunity to approach both Ministries of Education and National Fisheries Departments for input and to discuss how the curriculum supports improved policy coherence and possible interests or strategies for curriculum dissemination in national schools, the co-development of an onboarding experience for educators interested in facilitating the curriculum in their local SSF context, and work between focus groups to produce the 2nd Edition of the SSF Guidelines Curriculum with a set of new lesson plans and enrichment activities attuned to the needs of small island developing states and SSF in contexts of limited opportunities civic engagement.