What are the effects of water privatisation for countries in the Global South? Can higher education change our consumption behaviours? What are the obstacles to implementing the Sustainable Development Goals? These are just some of the questions students ask while preparing their pre-scientific paper, a requisite for final exams in Austrian high schools.
In 2015, when the United Nations (UN) decided on new global Sustainable Development Goals, the C3-Library for International Development (C3-Library) began to set out activities to introduce the 2030 Agenda to high school students and encourage them to conduct pre-scientific research on global sustainable development issues.
As articulated by the UN, student activism has an important role to play in achieving the SDGs. Pre-scientific research is an opportunity for students to critically examine global issues in local contexts and to reflect on one’s own impact. The C3-Library project aims to stimulate discussion and a commitment to a sustainable future by encouraging young people to become active global citizens immersed in public debate.
To address the complexities of sustainable development, Austrian students need to be competent in information-seeking methodology and exposed to the broad range of areas covered by the Agenda 2030. The C3-Library found it important for students to be adequately introduced to issues such as fair trade, global inequality, or migration. A particularly relevant target group are those young people with a migrant background whose perspectives tend to be underrepresented in the sustainability discourse.
The C3-Library’s programme for students is an ongoing project offering various engagement opportunities and individual support for high-school students ages 16 to 18. The programme consists of a combination of library services such as providing dossiers on selected SDGs related topics, which include examples of potential research questions and literature-search tips. The library and its information specialists provide targeted and tailored workshops to improve research skills and understanding of research methodology, and participatory events such as Living Libraries, which is especially effective in reaching the heterogeneous target group. Using these formats, the library creates spaces for debate and exchange at eye-level with experts and practitioners from the field.
Each year over 100 students from across Austria submit their pre-scientific research papers for the C3-Award, from which 9-10 are selected and honoured at a festive ceremony. Between the project’s start in 2016 and mid-2020, 638 students have taken part in the C3-Library’s workshops, 157 students have sought individual advice from information specialists, and 621 research papers have been submitted for the C3-Award, out of which 47 received awards.
With an SDG-related topic for their pre-scientific project, participants were able to realise and reflect on the global implications of their actions at the local level. Students became aware of potential hegemonic relationships of dependency and multi-layered forms of discrimination. They have developed critical curiosity and creativity and have become active citizens and change agents within their communities.
Magdalena Riedl, one of the project participants, and a receiver of the 2018 C3-Award, explains how the programme has inspired her future involvement in sustainability work, “It’s definitely not over after this. I hope I can go on to study either Philosophy or Sociology next year. Different organisations in Austria deal with this issue, I might look into some of them. But either way, I will not stop engaging with the topic of sustainable development”.
