Using the Charter of Human Responsibilities for Sustainability Education

Nina Gregg and Rachel Trajber took part in the November 2007 annual conference of the North American Association of Environmental Educators. The conference, which was attended by more than a thousand teachers, advocates and policy makers, offered workshops, presentations, demonstrations, scholarly papers, roundtables and strategy sessions.

Nina and Rachel led a workshop on “Using the Charter of Human Responsibilities for Sustainability Education.” In the workshop they introduced the Charter of Human Responsibilities and shared examples of how the Charter has been used for sustainability education around the world. Among the examples were the Charters written by children in the Philippines, India and Brazil. Nina and Rachel used a hands-on exercise to engage participants in thinking about their dreams of sustainable communities, the barriers to achieving those dreams, and the resources available to overcome the barriers and fulfill our responsibilities.

The exercise was an opportunity for people who did not know each other to discover common hopes and dreams, and together to identify actions they could take to fulfill those dreams.

The exercise “Responsibility for the Future” is adaptable to many different contexts and kinds of groups. It can be downloaded below.