At-home and at school learning resources from Learning for a Sustainable Future
Week 24: SDG 16 – Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
This week's LIO is all about UN SDG #16, promoting just, peaceful and inclusive societies. Safety and security are fundamental human rights that people everywhere deserve to experience as they go about their lives. In many parts of the world, ongoing conflicts, weak institutions, and limited access to justice are major threats to sustainable development and growth. In 2019 alone, we saw the number of people fleeing from persecution, war, and conflict exceed 79.5 million, which is the highest level ever recorded. The goal of this SDG is to promote peaceful and inclusive societies, provide access to justice, and build accountable and effective institutions at all levels of society - all of which are critical to sustainable development.

The activities outlined below introduce students to a wide variety of topics surrounding building inclusive and peaceful environments, exploring issues of conflict and justice around the world, and sharing ideas about how we take action to help make a difference globally!
This uniquely illustrated book offers an answer to the question, “What Does Peace Look Like?”  The answers are provided by students and convey images of peace through the eyes of a child.  The answers represented include, “Like something beautiful that goes away but will come back,” and “like a bouquet of flowers in a happy family living room.”  As an additional feature, the book includes the word peace in approximately 150 different languages.




Activities
  • Learn more about SDG 16 with this video for primary students Understand Goal 16: Peace and Justice 
  • Before reading the book What Does Peace Feel Like? ask students to use their five senses to describe what peace is like in their lives. What does peace look like, feel like and sound like? Record their ideas
  • Create Peace Rocks with your students and hide them in the schoolyard for other students to find. Have students reflect on their message before creating their rocks
  • Create a Peace Path outside or inside your school. Incorporate the peace rocks in the path
  • More activity ideas to enhance the concept of peace in your classroom
  • Organize a Peace Walk at your school or in your community. An annual event that brings students together to take collective action for peace
What did you think of What Does Peace Feel Like?
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Grades 4-6
The Power of Peace is a lesson plan designed to allow students to explore the topic of peace, learn more about peaceful activists and determine ways to incorporate peace into their school environment and the world around them.


Activities
  • Watch the SDG 16 Peace and Justice video to learn more about SDG 16
  • Brainstorm ideas and identify a definition of peace with your students
  • Learn more about seven youth peace activists as they fight for a better world
  • Complete the learning activity Research on peaceful activists. Encourage students to come up with a creative way to demonstrate their knowledge (video, short sketch etc.) of their activists’ beliefs or actions
  • After completing their research projects, revisit your classroom definition of peace or have students write their definition of peace. Display their definitions on a bulletin board or in the school hallway
  • Have students create their own comic poster for SDG 16 Peace and Justice
What did you think of The Power of Peace?
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Grades 7-12
The Ben E. King classic “Stand by Me” features a collaboration of 35 street musicians from around the world, bringing a message of peace. The first of a series of videos produced by the “Playing for Change Movement,” this powerful rendition of well-known standard highlights the belief that music has the power to breakdown boundaries and overcome distances between people. No matter whether individuals come from different geographic, political, economic, spiritual or ideological backgrounds, music has the power to build connections.


Activities
  • Watch this video to Understand Goal 16: Peace and Justice
  • Listen to the song or watch the video for Stand by Me
  • Learn more about the Playing for Change Movement and view more of their videos
  • Consider collaborating with your school music teacher to record your version of the song
  • Identify areas of conflict in the world today. Brainstorm possible solutions to conflict, locally, nationally and globally
  • Use the teacher’s guide for ideas to plan a service project to promote peace by helping others
  • Organize a Peace Walk at your school or in your community. An annual event that brings students together to take collective action for peace
What did you think of Stand By Me?
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This workbook aims to provide a tool for students to understand the Sustainable Development Goals and take meaningful action on those Goals. The resource is structured to provide educators and learners with an introduction to the SDGs and some background information for each of the goals. For each Goal, the guide provides a learning activity, an action or an event, and learning outcomes, local and global connections, and project ideas. 



Activities
  • Watch the SDG 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions video 
  • Get outside or in the school gym and play for SDG 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. After playing the games, discuss with students What is fair and how can you avoid a conflict? Discuss peace and justice in real life
  • SDG 16 – Conflict, Peace and Justice is a resource to explore the impact of conflict in the world and on the people’s lives globally. The booklet contains activities, statistics and information about the history of conflict, the consequences of conflict on human development, as well as ideas to celebrate those who are striving for peace
  • Become a peacebuilder and organize a Peace Club at your school, a great way to make a difference and take action to make the world a better place
What did you think of Stepping Stones for the Sustainable Development Goals?
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About Learning Inside Out

Above you will find a selection of activities, broken down by various grade levels. These guides will be released weekly and archived on our Learning Inside Out page, so you can always access the full catalogue.

All activities have been modified from resources on our R4R database, simplified and adapted for both outdoor learning in the school yard or at-home as needed. The activity descriptions above should contain all the information and links that you need!

If you'd like to view the full original resource on R4R, including curriculum connections for every province/territory, click the activity title.

We want this guide to work for you, so your feedback is invaluable to us.
Use the feedback button at the bottom of this Guide, or email us at info@LSF-LST.ca. We would also love to see photos of students engaging in the activities, please e-mail us any pictures or videos you have!
Let us know how this helped your learning and teaching from home or at school indoors and (hopefully) outdoors and what you'd like to see more of by filling out our brief feedback form!
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Learning for a Sustainable Future (LSF) is a Canadian charity with over 25 years of experience working within the education system. Our Resources for Rethinking (R4R) database is an award-winning collection of resources that are peer-reviewed by certified teachers and connected to curriculum in all provinces and territories. R4R is recommended on many Ministry of Education websites.
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