What better way, therefore, to teach children about difficult and important subjects than through storytelling? It’s this mindset which drives Cleary Vaughan-Lee, executive director of the Global Oneness Project, in her mission.
“All stories are rooted in something that's human; the ones we focus on telling through Global Oneness are rooted in the universal values of resilience, diversity and love,” says Vaughan-Lee.
Based in the US in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Global Oneness Project is a free, multimedia platform for educators and students that provides materials for immersive storytelling.
The platform uses film, photo essays and written stories to shine a spotlight on social, cultural, and environmental issues from people and communities worldwide – ultimately helping viewers of all ages to explore some of the deeper issues facing humanity through an accessible format.
Amid growing concerns over book censorship within US schools, and rising reports of discrimination and racial intolerance in many states, Vaughan-Lee believes there has never been a more crucial time for the organisation locally and globally.
Amid growing concerns over book censorship within US schools, and rising reports of discrimination and racial intolerance in many states, Vaughan-Lee believes there has never been a more crucial time for the organisation locally and globally.
Bringing documentary into the classroom
The Global Oneness Project began with Vaughan-Lee’s filmmaker husband, Emmanuel, back in 2005 – the same year that Youtube was founded and video documentary took much more present and candid role in peoples’ lives. “He started making films and visiting people from all around the world to document our common humanity,” she explains. “It was around the same time that video was changing our perspectives of how we really digest stories.”
Initially all the films on the website were created in-house, but as the platform grew, Global Oneness Project were able to license content from other photographers and filmmakers and broaden the initiative’s reach.
As Emmanuel built the platform, demand from educators grew organically as teachers were finding the stories and using them in their lesson plans. So when Vaughan-Lee joined in 2006, she made a conscious decision to bring in a “formal educational element, whereby we developed curricula to accompany all the stories we shared”.
“That was a way for us to bring in educational language, allowing teachers to really integrate these stories into the classroom,” she says.
Keeping the resources free and accessible to anyone who wanted to use them was a crucial part of this plan: “A lot of students in this country have no experience of the world, they haven’t had the opportunity to travel or to leave their small towns or witness other cultures. This is a window for them to do that,” she says.
Global Oneness Project tackles difficult topics – climate change, poverty, racial injustices, to name a few – by telling a story through the perspective of one individual or community.
“Trying to contextualise these global issues is core to what we do. It's an easy way for students to understand global issues that can be difficult to grasp,” Vaughan-Lee says. “It enables them to not only experience something so outside of their place in the world, but to enter it like we do with any kind of story that we can see ourselves in.”
Pushing back against censorship
In the US, Vaughan-Lee believes these stories of human empathy are needed now more than ever: “Our education systems are being broken and it’s very political,” she says.
“Our education systems are being broken and it’s very political,” she says.
She fears that difficult subjects such as colonial racism are being shied away from or actively discouraged in schools: “Censorship is limiting teachers and it's also instilling a certain kind of fear in the classroom.”
“Censorship is limiting teachers and it's also instilling a certain kind of fear in the classroom.”
Political pressures may also be stifling teachers’ abilities to discuss certain topics – a recent report by PEN America reveals more than 1,500 book bans have been instituted in US school districts the past year – but documentary films can offer a solution for teachers even when certain books are banned.
Vaughan-Lee gives the example of a short film published online by Global Oneness Project called “Welcome to Canada” by Adam Loften and Mary Fowles. The film follows the story of Mohammed Alsaleh, a young Syrian refugee granted asylum in Canada in 2014.
“One history teacher of the seventh grade decided to integrate this into her classroom because the curriculum concentrated on the history of Islam,” Vaughan-Lee explains. “A lot of her students had more questions about Islam relating to the refugee crisis of the time, so she was able to turn that history project into a larger one focusing on Islamophobia.”
It’s Vaughan-Lee’s hope that similar lessons in empathy and cultural understanding can take place in light of the Ukraine crisis, as well as pressing global challenges such as climate change.
More recently, the group have focused on featuring stories from Indigenous peoples’ communities in North America, teaching new audiences about the threats to these communities such as language loss, for example. “A lot of the places that we document, specifically in California, have Native communities that have been here for thousands of years. It is a very telling aspect of life that many people have overlooked, so telling these stories is really important to our mission,” she says.
Engaging students in nature
Global Oneness Project has also focused its efforts on the environment in recent months, “to really encourage students to really observe the world around them and document the changes that they're seeing,” says Vaughan-Lee.
Recently, Global Oneness Project have launched a student photography and illustration competition named “The Environment is in You,” after a line coined by the poet and author Wendell Berry.
The idea is for students to document something revealing hope and fragility in climate change. “A lot of times when we think of the environment we separate ourselves from it, but in fact, we're very much the environment as well,” Vaughan-Lee explains. “We wanted to make that distinction quite specific for this and see what students came up with.” A new student contest will be released later this year.
Asked what advice she would give to other change makers wishing to follow in Global Oneness’ footsteps, Vaughan-Lee recommends “honing in on what your passion is how you would like to see the world. That’s something that that really drives our project.”
“honing in on what your passion is how you would like to see the world. That’s something that that really drives our project.”
“If you create a mission that reflects your passion, you can be quite specific in how you go about that project and it will add fuel to what you want to do.” Vaughan-Lee’s own passion, she says, is “trying to reach students through storytelling, but really to hear what they have to say.”
"It comes back to the need to give young people authority,” she concludes, “we really need to be looking at students as the ones who have this knowledge and wisdom. If we operate out of a place of fear we’re going to miss opportunities to reach students, but also miss opportunities on a larger aspect for change.”
"If we operate out of a place of fear we’re going to miss opportunities to reach students, but also miss opportunities on a larger aspect for change.”
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