Acknowledgements

The North-South Centre's Programme on "Education and Training for Global Interdependence" was created with the aim of consolidating the European debate on the integration of "global education" into the curricula of the formal and informal education sectors and stimulating an exchange of good practice in this field.

The Programme addresses the fundamental need to educate and inform the individual on the important role he/she can play in promoting sustainable development, which the Centre defines not merely as the protection of the physical environment but also, and more importantly, as the protection of the human environment, i.e. pluralist democracy and respect for human rights.

One of the key objectives of the Programme is to achieve a high level of transparency regarding existing structures and policies that promote global education at European level. The aim is to go beyond merely theoretical concepts and to ensure that the result of concerted policies and actions makes a noticeable difference both inside and outside the classroom.

Within this context, the key tasks of the Programme are:

* to analyse the legal and political framework for promoting global education at the national and regional levels;

* to identify local partners;

* to synergise existing resources and diverse expertise in the field of global education;

* to stimulate, through increased interaction and partnerships in the North and South, the on-going exchange and development of ever more creative ideas and methods.

This strategy also reflects the realisation that creativity evolves best in the absence of exclusively top-down formal structures, drawing strength from more community-oriented, participatory processes.

The target group of the Programme consists of the actors and multipliers of educational processes in the formal and non-formal sectors, including the teaching profession, the opinion leaders and trainers of NGOs and competent experts at the level of government and local and regional authorities. Young people have also been identified as a major and receptive audience for the message of global interdependence. The Programme achieves its aims through the organisation of thematic seminars, workshops, annual inter-governmental roundtables on global education, networking and the publication of materials and information on global education.

In March 1995, in the framework of the Programme, the North-South Centre organised a "Co-ordination Meeting on Pedagogical Materials for Global Citizenship" in Amsterdam. These pages are the fruit of the discussions at the event which proposed that steps be taken to inform educators of existing global education resources and that the North-South Centre produce a publication presenting good practice in the field.