Aims and Objectives of Global Footprints


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'A footprint means pressing down and global means world, so 'global footprint' means pressing down on the world and we don't want to press too hard' a child's definition of Global Footprint

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Who we are

The Humanities Education Centre is based in Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London. The Centre promotes the values, aims and principles of development education and global citizenship through all areas of education.

Development education encompasses the following principles:

Enabling people to understand the links between their own lives and those of people throughout the world;
Increasing understanding of the economic, social, political and environmental forces which shape our lives;
Developing the skills, attitudes and values which enable people to work together to bring about change and take control of their own lives;
Working towards achieving a more just and sustainable world in which power and resources are more equitably shared.

HEC has produced a number of resources and developed a number of websites. The latter include:

The Humanities Education Centre is part of the LaSER Global Dimension consortium of organisations aiming to enhance and increase the global dimension in schools. LaSER is short for the London and South-east England regions. To achieve this it is co-ordinating and promoting a wide range of high quality support.

For more information go to: www.local4global.org.uk
Local 4 Global is for teachers and other educators to build a learning community for the global dimension.

HEC is also a Development Education Centre or DEC.

The 'Global Footprint'

The project aims to adapt the concept of the 'ecological footprint' developed by Wackernagel and Rees. This is a way of measuring the land area necessary to sustain current levels of resource consumption and waste discharge by a given population. In short it is a measure of human impact on the environment.

The Global Footprints project seeks to explore ways in which schools can examine, measure and reduce their impact on the environment, but also explore a footprint which takes account of the social and global effects of human activity. A school might therefore consider the effects of an anti-bullying strategy on the social development of the school, or the implications of purchasing fair trade products on sustainable development and justice for producer communities in the south.


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		Project originally funded by EU and DfID with support from Tower Hamlets LEA