Jenny Foster is the project lead for the Global Goals Centre – an interactive Education Centre in Bristol that will contribute to the understanding of key elements of the Global Goals.

“Imagine if every year, we could enable thousands of school children and local people to be fully aware of the issues facing our planet and have the passion, knowledge and problem-solving capacity to help bring an end to poverty, inequality and climate change?

This is what we aim to do by setting up a Global Goals Centre, an immersive Education Centre in Bristol based on the Sustainable Development Goals. Groups would move through a series of scenarios that encompass different aspects of the goals. So, for example, they might start in a mock-up shop in Bristol and buy a T-shirt. When they beep on the bar code of that T-shirt that opens the door to the factory in Bangladesh where it was made; the group meets the people there, maybe children working, mostly women, sees the conditions and sit and make a virtual T-shirt using a game, and get penalised for mistakes, which means they can’t feed their family.

The T-shirt is made from cotton so the next room is the cotton field in India; they meet the farmer, he’s using pesticides – why? What impact does it have on the soil, on local health? What else could he do instead?

Another group could start with a bag of Fairtrade coffee and go to the coffee plantation in Nicaragua which Bristol is twinned with – they become the FT Co-op and have to make a decision how to spend their premium money – they have climate change challenges but also need to pay for education and health care.

Another group may have a plastic bottle and follow its journey into the sea and look at the impact on wildlife, maybe through virtual reality.

At least one scenario would be a local one – for example flooding and how to respond to that.

Each of these scenarios would also have an Ideas Tank for each group to input how they would change this situation and actions that they/their school/their community can do to make it better. This can then be emailed or messaged to them or their school so they remember what they committed to do, to try to ensure impacts beyond the visit.

So, how can the Partnership get involved? We are looking for organisations to partner with us to enable us to bring this Centre to Bristol. We will need sponsors – possibly one for each of the scenarios. We will need digital creatives, PR, help with Business planning – please think about what your organisation can bring – I would love to meet with you to discuss. We see this as a collaborative project for the city and the West of England region.

It will be a landmark project, nowhere exists like this in the world – we can create the world’s first SDG Hub – an innovation worthy of a Green Capital City.”

• Get in touch with Jenny Foster at bristolggc@gmail.com 07970-878337
• Find more information at www. globalgoalscentre.org and follow @bristolggc on twitter
• Keep up to date with future news and information about Bristol Green Capital Partnership and the SDGs by joining here. If your organisation is already a member and you would like to get more involved, you can register as a member contact here
• Read Bristol Green Capital Partnership’s Bristol Method+ report Driving the Sustainable Development Goals agenda at city level in Bristol
• Read more about the Bristol’s activity around the SDGs hosted by Bristol Green Capital Partnership here