The World’s Largest Lesson

On the 13th of March, more than 150 AIESEC members throughout the Netherlands gave workshops about the Sustainable Development Goals to Dutch high school students as a part of the ‘World’s Largest Lesson’ initiative. We visited 125 different school classes and spoke to over 2000 students.

Through these workshops, we want to teach Dutch youth about the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations and how we can make a contribution to these goals in our daily lives. This will make the students think about what changes they can make in their own lives to change the world for the better, such as taking shorter showers, eating less meat, participating in a Women’s March and making monthly donations to charity.

According to Daley van de Sande, the current President of AIESEC in the Netherlands, initiatives such as the World’s Largest Lesson are important because “as AIESEC we want to change the world bit by bit by developing the youth”.

AIESEC is the biggest youth organization in the world and sees leadership amongst young people as a fundamental solution for the problems that we currently face as a global society. We want to help young people develop their full potential and therefore care about empowering Dutch high school students to get involved in shaping their own future. Normally, AIESEC tries to accomplish this goal through offering youngsters between 18 and 30 a platform – in the form of international internships, voluntary projects and board years within AIESEC – to develop themselves in terms of self-awareness, communicative skills and world citizenship.

This event of the 13th of March is part of the international The World’s Largest Lesson initiative of UNICEF. Through this initiative, millions of children in more than 130 children have been educated about the Sustainable Development Goals and have gotten an idea of how they themselves can contribute to the goals.

AIESEC has also organized many World’s Largest Lessons outside of the Netherlands. Daley van de Sande has attended four so far, in Colombia, Nicaragua, Egypt and now the Netherlands. “It is fantastic to witness the interest and involvement of young people being sparked and to see youngsters come up with initiatives to make their own contribution – big or small – to the Sustainable Development Goals.”

So how will you get involved?

This post was written by Tessa Koorevaar, member of AIESEC in the Netherlands. Besides spreading awareness about the SGG’s we offer international voluntary projects and professional internships with the aim of developing leadership in youth.