What? La Silla Roja – A Global Citizenship Project on the Right to Education. What does La Silla Roja mean? It means The Red Chair.

 Why? An empty red chair placed in schools and classrooms symbolizes the 58 million children who currently do not have access to quality education. This serves as a powerful starting point for working on the topic further with students of all ages. This project was started in a Jesuit school in northern Spain and then brought to other schools through Entreculturas. Now, Educate Magis, together with Entreculturas would like to share this project with Jesuit schools all over the world. 

How? Educate Magis will share materials which you can use to raise awareness on this important topic by calling students to engage in activities and reflections.

Where? We invite you to take part in this project in your individual classroom or with your entire school and to share your experiences with other schools around the world through Educate Magis.

When? We will be publishing materials in the coming months and invite schools to participate as and how they wish. We will then, as a global network, all together take action in March, 2017.   

As we have learned together over the past few weeks, Global Citizenship is being mindful that we are all global citizens with a shared humanity and a shared responsibility to each other and to our earth. Together as global citizens we are called to action to tackle the issues of degradation, poverty and marginalization in our world.

As an online community of educators one issue which we have a particular responsibility to engage with is that of education. We have the opportunity to offer our students a quality education. A human right which many people are denied. At the moment, 58 million children remain without access to quality education. How can we learn more about this? How can we raise awareness on this topic with our students?

Educate Magis, together with Entreculturas, will be sharing the Red Chair Project ‘La Silla Roja’ with educators around the world. The main objective of this project is to raise awareness about the causes and consequences of the fact that 58 million children do not have access to quality education. The red chair represents a space that is left empty by boys and girls who are prevented from accessing education and who are unable to enjoy this basic human right.

This project will offer educators resources and learning materials on global citizenship and on the right to education together with ideas on how to implement the red chair project with students. There will be different levels of engagement depending on teachers’ availability. Resources will also cater for different age groups and will be published in Spanish and English. It will be a chance for us as a global network to engage in a real global experience and share these experiences with other educators in our global community.

Watch out over the coming weeks as we begin to publish materials for you to use in your classroom and stories of teachers who have already participated in La Silla Roja project.

Together we can take action to raise awareness and defend the right to education! 

To see or share more experiences of the Red Chair Project click here.