CONCEPT NOTE: SSFGC's 2nd Stage
Proposal for Curriculum Uptake & 2nd Edition Co-Creation Process
After a yearlong participatory development process during IYAFA 2022, the 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 the FAO, Lighthouse Foundation, and community-based to global partners working for sustainable fisheries and quality rural education to envision the project's following stages and next steps.
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1.a | Through the FAO's Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum), C2C seeks to "Call for Submissions" from FAO volunteer multistakeholder consultants for feedback on the curriculum 1st edition. C2C will analyze results and interweave insights into the curriculum's 2nd edition as well as dissemination strategy and onboarding experience for new educators.
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1.b | C2C seeks the opportunity to approach both Ministries of Education and National Fisheries Departments for feedback and to discuss how the curriculum supports improved policy coherence and possible interests or strategies for curriculum dissemination in national schools.
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1.c | C2C will deliver the illustrated curriculum and participant workbook to educators and learners in our focus groups in Nigeria, India, and Madagascar, who co-created and remotely piloted activities. As part of Festival Somos Mar and Talleres Somos Ríos 2023, C2C will return the published curriculum to the educators and learners who co-created and piloted its contents with us during the IYAFA 2022 along both the northern coast of Peru and in the Amazon. We seek their feedback and interest in SSF Youth Clubs for continued engagement with the holistic SSF Guidelines Implementation beyond the curriculum. The SSF Guidelines Curriculum team will work with educators from our 1st edition focus groups C2C will analyze and interweave critiques into the curriculum's 2nd edition design, adjusting lesson plans, enrichment activities, and supplemental materials accordingly.
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1.d | 2.d | 3.d | 4.d | The curriculum's 2nd edition seeks to include more nuance by considering small island nations and SSF communities with limited civic engagement due to precarious political realities hampering the SSF Guidelines' implementation. Educators from local schools, university research institutions, nonprofits, and social enterprises in Barbados, French Polynesia, Myanmar, and Vietnam will join the SSF Guidelines Curriculum development team as focus groups to review the curriculum 1st edition and offer their feedback based on how the content resonates with their local contexts. The 2nd edition educators will work with C2C and receive mentorship from educators from the curriculum's 1st edition to adapt pre-existing content and develop their own lesson plans and enrichment activities that address the needs of their SSF community in the context of limited freedom of expression and climate change. Educators will pilot their adapted and new lesson plans with a group of local learners with monitoring and evaluation support from C2C and continued mentorship from 1st edition educators. After the pilots, C2C will assist educators in refining their lessons, activities, and handouts and ask for their consultation on accompanying illustrations to present their content in an appealing way. C2C will publish the new and adapted content as part of the 2nd edition.
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2.a | 3.a | 4.a | C2C will facilitate sessions between 1st and 2nd edition educators that partner focus groups for one-on-one dialogues and collaborative group sessions, sharing best practices and experiences with unique challenges for teaching in often isolated SSF communities. C2C will take the opportunity to consult with the focus group on developing a knowledge exchange platform that can provide a space for educators to connect, collaborate, and share ideas while and after facilitating the curriculum, which can lead to increased creativity and innovation in their teaching while breaking down barriers of isolation. C2C will consult with researchers and partners to design a knowledge exchange pilot that follows an emergent strategy to build relationships and create a sense of community, helping to reduce the isolation often experienced by educators in rural SSF and foster a supportive environment that promotes professional growth, development opportunities, and best practices for monitoring and evaluating the implementation of the SSF Guidelines with young learners. C2C proposes a basic platform prototype to build upon and enhance user experience.
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2.b | 3.b | 4.b | C2C adapt and create new educational resources focusing on further developing the curriculum's supplement resources that support educators to realize lesson plans and enrichment activities' "investigation" and "imagination" dynamics, assignments, and projects. C2C will consult with focus group educators to design and improve resources such as "How to Make _" guides by C2C for co-creating audiovisual productions with participants and to leverage participatory youth action research techniques such as community mapping, interviews, survey design, and additional community-based tools. Through future iterations of Festival Somos Mar and Talleres Somos Ríos in Peru and possible international workshops, C2C will co-develop multimedia content with young learners and educators to accompany the curriculum 2nd edition and be available on the knowledge exchange platform.
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2.c | 3.c | 4.c | C2C recognizes the curriculum's need to reach educators in a way that encourages uptake and confidence in the facilitator's ability to deliver its contents while contributing to their professional capacity development goals as teachers or nonprofit educators. C2C will work with 1st and 2nd edition educators to design an onboarding experience for new facilitators to buy into the curriculum as a professional development tool and a way to engage their target youth participants in shaping change in their local SSF communities. The "training of the educators" program will consist of a one-week in-person "BootCamp" with follow-up training, invitations to webinars by partner organizations, and access to a digital companion of instructional materials. ​