Our lovely Regional Victorian club manager, Sally-Anne Symes, recently shared these great pics with us of a family hiking trip in the Grampians National Park in Victoria during the April holidays and the images really made us think about what it takes to raise a global citizen.

Helping the world communicate by sharing our love of languages and playing our part in raising children to succeed and make a positive contribution to the world is central to the Fun Languages’ mission. And it’s an ideaology that is embraced by all our club managers and teachers across Australia and New Zealand.

As we see it, raising a responsible global citizen is as much about nurturing a respect and love for our natural world as it is about giving children the tool of languages to be able to communicate with people from other cultures.

For the first time in the history of the human race, all four corners of the world are being brought into ever closer contact, with increasing integration arising from the interchange of world views and cultures.

And although it’s necessary for us, as adults, to constantly adapt to this new culturally and economically globalised environment, it is our children who will most need the adaptable qualities of temperament and mind that are necessary to handle the challenges that arise from our increasingly “small world”.

Thinking and teaching with a global perspective provides an opportunity to introduce children to world issues and concepts that help them to understand that the planet and its occupants are interconnected, interdependent and fragile!