Send My Friend To School

There are none better placed than children themselves to advocate for the right of all children to have an inclusive, equitable and quality education. This is the philosophy behind Send My Friend to School, a unique coalition which brings together young people, politicians, teachers and civil society in joint campaigning to demand education for all children across the globe.


The first Send My Friend campaign in schools took place 20 years ago in 2005, when pupils joined Nelson Mandela onstage at the historic Make Poverty History event in London’s Trafalgar Square. Since then, Send My Friend has campaigned on a specific education theme each year, such as gender equality, literacy, emergencies and removing barriers to education for persons with disabilities. Young people from thousands of schools have met their constituency MPs and young advocates have lobbied Parliament, met Ministers and hosted roundtables at the party conferences.


In March 2025, we’re launching our new ‘Invest in My Friends’ Learning’ campaign, calling on the Government to urgently accelerate their commitment towards Sustainable Development Goal 4. In addition to the school campaign, Send My Friend is publishing a policy report and lobbying decision makers to take greater action. There are only five years left until 2030, when countries are due to meet the Sustainable Development Goal targets. There is no time to waste. 


Since its launch 25 years ago, the campaign has succeeded in placing education firmly on the UK’s development agenda and helped to secure funding for the Global Partnership for Education and Education Cannot Wait. It’s often said that MPs only advocate for the issues that their communities care about, and many MPs have had their first interest in global education sparked by meeting passionate young constituents. We support young people to meet at least 100 MPs every year. Many MPs were newly elected in 2024 and are still identifying the issues they wish to champion. Young people are taking the opportunity to give them a strong nudge towards global education.


However, there’s little doubt that progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 4 has been faltering for some time. In addition, school pupils and their teachers everywhere have experienced the terrible impacts of Covid-19 and its aftermath. In this rapidly changing world Send My Friend has had to adapt. The most fundamental way we’ve done this is to bring young people more prominently into the high-level influencing spaces usually occupied by professional adult advocates. This has included meeting the Foreign Secretary, briefing the International Development Committee and participating in the COP climate change conference. In 2023, we launched the Young People’s Policy Report on Education in Emergencies. This is the first time, we’re aware of, that a policy report was specifically written for and launched by young people.


In recent years, the Campaign Champions programme has become an integral part of Send My Friend to School. We recruit 20 14-15 year old pupils every year who provide leadership and high-level advocacy for the campaign. Their training and the resources we produce for the 1,200 schools currently taking part in the campaign reflect the participatory and youth-led ethos we wish to embed. Send My Friend sets out to both transform global education and also be transformational for all the young people who take part in it.


This is never more true than in the Steve Sinnott Youth Ambassador programme. With the support of the Steve Sinnott Foundation and Oxfam GB we invite two young people from the Global South to visit the UK every year to lead high level advocacy and partnership campaigning. A particularly memorable highlight occurred on 20 September 2019, when Jessy and Isaac, the Young Ambassadors from Malawi, spoke to tens of thousands of young people gathered outside Parliament at the School Strike for Climate. Later this year we hope to welcome Queen and Santos, the 2025 Young Ambassadors from Uganda, to campaign in the UK. 


The lived experiences and values of young people in 2025 mean they are increasingly passionate about issues such as racial justice, gender equality, the climate crisis, safety, wellbeing and trauma. These resonate strongly with SDG4’s holistic aim of providing all children everywhere with an ‘inclusive and equitable quality education’. This is our strongest guarantee that the passion, creativity and commitment of young people and their teachers in the UK will continue to be heard in solidarity with children around the world as they call for greater investment in education during the next two years. 


To learn more and join Send My Friend to School visit www.sendmyfriend.org


BIOGRAPHY

John McLaverty is the former youth campaigner for Oxfam GB and a retired secondary school teacher and teacher educator. He is presently co-chair of Send My Friend to School and volunteers for Schools of Sanctuary.



John McLaverty • May 12, 2025

36 Bicycles. Countless Futures in The Gambia.

By Ann Beatty • May 20, 2026
How a simple act of practical solidarity is transforming the journey to school in The Gambia’s Central River Region North Policies have been written. Schools have been built. Yet for many children in The Gambia’s Central River Region North, access to education is still measured in kilometres, not opportunity. 

Education for Hope in Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous Times

By Laura Griffin • May 13, 2026
‘In a single hour vast tracts of shaded woodland became a jumble of torn trees and upturned soil, exposed to the glare of the summer sun. Such land-clearing events are rare, but forests exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of disaster. I’m told that the Chinese character for ‘catastrophe’ is the same as that which represents the word ‘opportunity’. And, the blowdown, while catastrophic, presented opportunities for many species.’ (Wall Kimmerer, 2003: 89). In the context of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (Stein, 2021) what kinds of education for hope might support children’s and young people’s critical engagement in local and global issues? In the spirit of exploring the possibilities of hope further, this short article focuses on the area of global citizenship and sustainabilityrelated education. It will briefly open by sharing commonalities across pedagogical approaches that take up the concept and act of hope more critically, and close by offering reflective questions for educators, with suggestions for further reading. Perhaps it is a kind of hope that is grounded in the present, in future reimagining(s), in ethical solidarity, and an acknowledgement of our deep entanglement with the living metabolism of planet earth 1 our singular home (UNESCO, 2021); a hope that engages with complex root causes and lived realities of multiple overlapping crises in critically reflexive and contextually relevant ways. As McCloskey notes, ‘Hope can fire our collective imagination and critical consciousness as a mainspring to activism and intervention in the world.’ (2025: 3). Commonalities across critical pedagogical approaches to hope include: Acknowledging the context of a ‘seamless single story of progress, development and human evolution’ (Andreotti, V.D.O., 2021b Relating to social and ecological justice and the wellbeing of people and planet Using participatory, action-orientated and inquiry-based learning processes Exploring diverse worldviews and perspectives Practising grounding in the present with opening up possibilities for change (relational, embodied, response-able 2 ) Experiencing ‘struggle’ in different forms (dialogical, selfreflexive, open-ended) Engaging individual and collective agency, action and activism Looking for lifelong and life-wide learning and unlearning. 1 See ‘Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness’, in Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. 2021a 2 See ‘Crossing Borders’ in 2 Depth Education “Depth Education and the Possibility of GCE Otherwise, 2021b. Source: Andreotti, V. 2021a & 2021b., Atif, A. (2025)., Bourn, D. 2021., Bryan. A. and Mochizuki,Y., 2024., Giroux, H.A. 2025., Meade, E. 2025. Whilst engaging in the concept and act of hope more critically reflect upon: What kinds of education for hope might you explore further and why? How might you provide generative spaces for engaging in diverse worldviews and perspectives? In what ways can you facilitate individual and collective agency? How might you support learners’ practice grounding in the present in order to relate differently? In what ways can you support learners in navigating complex root causes and lived realities of local and global issues? As Chief Ninawa Hini Kui affirms, ‘The future depends much less on the images we project ahead than on our capacity to repair relations and build relationships differently in the present.’ (Andreotti et al, 2023: 73. An invitation for further reading: Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future . d’Abreu, C., Belgeonne, C., Bourn, D. and Hatley, J. (2025) ‘Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future’. DERC Research Paper 24. London: UCL Institute of Education. Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism. Machado de Oliveira Andreotti, V. (2021a) ‘Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism’ , London: Penguin Random House. Development Education and Hope . McCloskey, S. (2025). (ed) ‘Development Education and Hope’. ‘Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review’ , Vol. 41, Autumn. Centre for Global Education, Belfast. Link to and download the full reference list here

I heard it said today by a friend that “You learn a language best when you use it to speak and write about things that are important to you. ”

By Susan Piper • May 6, 2026
This summed up to me about why I volunteer for the Hands Up Project. HUP is a charity trust which, through its network of volunteers, connects children around the world with young people in Palestine. By means of online interaction, drama and storytelling activities, it enables the use of creativity and selfexpression to promote mutual understanding, personal growth, and the development of English language skills. I joined HUP in 2020 during COVID. After going to Palestine in 2017, I wanted to get more involved in working with Palestinian children in schools. HUP gave me the opportunity to link up with schools in the West Bank and Gaza. Every week I’d tell them stories from all over the world, then we’d discuss it, play games and I’d get them to retell it. Sometimes we would work from their coursebook English for Palestine’ in mutual team teaching sessions with their teacher. The simple act of telling a story became much more than entertainment. It became connection, healing, and a bridge to the world beyond their immediate reality to help them improve their language skills, and to give them a platform to speak about their lives in a language that connects them to people everywhere. I loved it, every week, seeing their smiling faces on the screen and building long lasting friendships with their teachers. I even went to Gaza in 2023 and met some of the kids I’d only seen on Zoom. It was a beautiful experience and something I will never forget. As hostilities escalated, I lost contact with everyone. I thought about where the kids were and what had happened to them. As I watched schools being bombed, universities flattened, and people killed in their thousands, I thought about where the kids I’d met were and what was happening to them. I kept in contact with many of the teachers I knew and heard daily news of displacement, destruction, hunger and bombing. Recently, I’ve started to link up again with children in Gaza, and it feels wonderful to be back helping them learn after being denied an education for over two years. Connecting with children in Palestine is more than just words. When a child in Palestine confidently tells their story to someone on the other side of the world, bridges are built, empathy grows, and the world gains a fuller picture of childhood in contexts far from peace and privilege. My work with these children is rooted in the belief that education and voice are inseparable. Through storytelling and English language learning, I witness children not just learning new vocabulary, but reclaiming their narratives, believing in their potential, and finding human connection in a world they perceive has abandoned them. And more than anything, this work reminds us all that children — everywhere — deserve to learn, to speak, and to be heard. Links to HUP information, books and resources: The Hands Up Project BY SUSAN PIPER Susan Piper is currently an ESOL teacher in Oldham, Greater Manchester and has worked in education for over 30 years. She is also a volunteer for the Hands Up Project and is the International Solidarity Officer and President of her NEU district. She believes in quality education for all and aims to make her lessons creative and inclusive so that effective language learning can take place.