UTS and Actout: Raising Awareness through Experiential Learning

Education   Mar 4, 2015 by Alexander Cui

Actout is social justice organization at UTS that fosters global empathy and world issues literacy through experiential workshops. We are a team of twenty students that have created workshops about urban-rural migration, sweatshops, and natural crises in India, and LGBTQ rights advocacy and the freedom of speech in Russia. These workshops focus on putting students in the shoes of Indian farmers, Indian policymakers, sweatshop labourers, sweatshop managers, and even reporters in Russia. For example, we've recreated sweatshops in the classroom, and had students to sow t-shirts under the pressure of fellow student "managers". In this manner, these students develop stronger empathetic links with global issues. By learning through the lens of these characters, these students understand the values, struggles, and compromises these characters make in order to succeed. Further more, we draw a connections between sweatshops in India, and consumers in Canada; and media suppression in Russia, and in Canada, to get students to consider their global relationships as global citizens. We've reached over three hundred students with our workshops, and are publishing these lesson plans in the Monograph, an Ontario geography teacher's journal. In addition, we are publishing a political magazine at our school so all students can join in the discussion about global events and problems. We'd love for you to check out our website, at actout.ca, and to give us feedback!

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