We are an education programme called World's Largest Lesson. We bring the SDGs to millions of children globally in over 150 countries since our launch in September 2015.

We produce free and creative resources for educators to teach lessons, run projects and stimulate action in support of the Goals. At the heart of our resources sit animated films to inspire students to use their creative powers to support and take action for the Goals.

Delivered in partnership with UNICEF, NGOs and private sector organisations and foundations, we reach students through multiple channels.

To reach every child globally with the SDGs to engage and encourage them to take action for the SDGs.

Partners include NGOs, private sector organisations including employee volunteering schemes, youth organisations such as AIESEC, Government, we write to Ministers of Educating annually asking them to encourage their schools to take part, UN agencies and educational stakeholders from teachers to EdTech platforms. Our founding partners are UNICEF and UNESCO.

We engage partners through our communications on social media and newsletters.

Teacher feedback reports renewed enthusiasm for teaching and student engagement in taking ownership for their learning and feeling inspired to make change.

We produce content (lesson plans, animated films and comics) that teachers can use ‘off the shelf’ or adapt to teach the Goals. These resources are introductory and Goal-specific. http://worldslargestlesson.globalgoals.org/#the-goals

We also share our content updates through our partner and educator newsletters and on social media.

We have a global network spanning 153 countries and we have reached 8 million children in 2018 alone. We measure this through feedback from teachers and students to our email and social media, views and downloads of our content, how many people add themselves to our interactive map to say they undertook one of our lessons, partners report back to us on how many children and teachers they shared our content with and UNICEF track how many children through their networks were reached with our resources.

active in 153 countries
900, 000 students marked on our interactive map of receiving a lesson since 2015
79 UNICEF offices took part in 2018 up 12% on 2017
2.1m content views in 2018
Children reached overall in 2018 = 8.01 million

Quotes from teachers:
“The SDGs are immediately relatable….students finally see relevance to learning if they know they are learning skills to solve real life problems.” Ginny Sterling, Rivera Early College High School, Texas, USA
“…For years we’ve been teaching in a vacuum, introducing concepts in isolation. The SDGs can help us as educators to better communicate how students can be a huge solution in making the world a better place.”
Shirlette Ferrari, Teacher, Jamaica
“The World’s Largest Lesson is an inspiring initiative that has a very important role in spreading awareness of the SDGs. Through their resources, they have enhanced not only mine but all my students’ empathy.” Adelaide Jordoa, Portugal

Enabling Factors – We have worked hard to ensure our content is engaging for students and readily accessible. All our key content is translated into 10 languages and this helps us to reach as many children as possible. We are also supported by a broad number of partners who have been able to deliver a World’s Largest Lesson into their communities. They have also supported us in translating of materials.
Constraints – Finding the required funding for content creation and core costs has been a challenge. Teacher knowledge on the SDGs has also posed as a difficulty, as teachers are hesitant to deliver lessons on subjects they do not feel confident about.

Participating in a World’s Largest Lesson is easy to do and low cost. All our resources are free and easy to download. We employ a very small team in London who operate globally leveraging a large network. Our growth and scale rely on replicating this concept and we are looking to hire on a more regional basis in order to create more direct, localised contacts (with hopes to open a WLL office in Nigeria in 2019).

Key conclusions – make your content engaging and interesting so that students will want to do more. Make it easy and accessible so that your audience is not overwhelmed. Understand what you are asking your audience to do – we’re not asking teachers to reshape their whole school and curriculum in order to participate. We focus on making WLL student led and directed and use this student interest to highlight to governments the value it has of putting the SDGs into school curriculums.

https://www.globalgoals.org/
https://www.youtube.com/theglobalgoals
https://vimeo.com/worldslargestlesson
http://worldslargestlesson.globalgoals.org/
https://education.microsoft.com/courses-and-resources/courses/SDG