From Sabah to the World: Using Local Context to Build Global Citizenship Through Enrichment - Mark Wheatley

How can schools nurture globally minded learners while staying deeply connected to their local environment? This session explores how enrichment programmes can transform the local—its people, culture, ecology, and community needs—into a powerful engine for global citizenship learning. Drawing on real examples from two very different but equally rich contexts—Sabah, Borneo and Maputo, Mozambique—this presentation demonstrates how schools can use their unique setting to develop student agency, empathy, leadership, and global competencies.

In Sabah, enrichment rooted in marine conservation, rainforest biodiversity, indigenous cultural heritage, and regional sustainability challenges offers natural gateways to global issues such as climate justice and cultural preservation. In Mozambique, community-based service learning, needs-assessment projects in local schools, cultural-diaspora studies, and a focus on de-colonization initiatives provided authentic opportunities for students to understand inequality, identity, and development through lived experience. As schools embrace 21st-century skills, it is essential that we do not exacerbate already existing inequalities and widen the gap.

This session presents a practical framework for aligning local opportunities with global competencies, showing how enrichment activities can be intentionally designed to:Connect local issues with global themes such as the SDGs, interdependence, and social justice.Support inquiry-based, student-led action through structured enrichment pathways.Build ethical, sustainable partnerships with local organisations and communities.Strengthen reflection, metacognition, and intercultural understanding across age groups.Integrate enrichment meaningfully with a varirety of curricula to enhance academic learning.
Participants will leave with adaptable models, planning tools, and templates for designing place-based enrichment that elevates students from local participants to global citizens. This session is ideal for international and national-school educators seeking practical, realistic ways to embed global citizenship (a key skills underpinning 21st century learning) through authentic, contextualised cultural and enrichment experiences.

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