Children Citizenship and Environment

Children Citizenship and Environment: Nurturing a democratic imagination in a changing world

How can we better support young citizens to address four difficult and intersecting challenges: dangerous environmental change, growing social inequality, unprecedented youth unemployment in an unsustainable economy, and weakening democracies as communities everywhere struggle to hold global financial power to account?

Reflecting on these questions Hayward offers a new agenda for citizenship and environmental education, one which reflects the responsibility and opportunities facing educators, researchers, parents and community groups in neoliberal democracies to help young citizens as they learn to think and act critically and creatively to 'make a difference' on the issues that concern them.

We have become used to thinking about our environmental impact as our ecological footprint-but what of our citizenship impact? What kind of 'social handprint' are we leaving behind for our children and future generations? The FEARS Handprint of Authoritarianism? The SMART Handprint of thin Environmentalism, or the SEEDS of a new Ecological Handprint? And what difference does it make? The seminar draws on a new book by the author, half the author royalties are donated to children in poverty after the earthquakes in Bronwyn's home city of Christchurch New Zealand.