Coronavirus Update

Hi John

As the ongoing COVID pandemic has highlighted gross racial disparities in health outcomes, enduring issues around policy brutality and racial injustice have also been starkly highlighted. At the same time, the energy to tear up and rewrite the educational curriculum is gaining traction and political attention. An honest look at what has been left out of our history classes will shine a light on our current global power dynamics. 

All too often, the same countries which benefited from colonialism still hold the most power and wealth today, while billions of people continue to live in poverty and poor health.  This colonial legacy has shaped the current structural causes of poverty and inequality, like neoliberal tax practices, exploitative trade deals, and heavy burdens of debt, which continue to disproportionately disadvantage countries of the Global South. 

Last year our Policy & Campaigns team delivered workshops in 6th form colleges which explored the links between colonialism and how it’s linked to global poverty today. This was part of a project with Consented, an organisation who run lessons on race, class and colonialism in schools across London. We are excited to continue this work with others to ensure young people are taught the whole picture in their education, building an understanding of how some countries gathered power over others and the continued impact this has. 
 

We strongly support the call for curriculum change, led by organisations like Fill in the Blanks, who are 6th form student campaigners. They recently published an article outlining why this is so important and the different ways people can support their cause (we also got a mention!). Their website has a list of all of the up-to-date actions:

COVID-19 & maternal health in Guatemala