Kilcornan House
Clarinbridge
Galway
Ireland
- International/Cultural relations
The Galway One World Centre (GOWC) is a Development Education Centre based in the West of Ireland. It is governed by a board of directors which is elected by the membership every year at the Annual General Meeting. Currently the GOWC employs three part-time staff and has an annual budget of approx €100,000. Main funder on an annual basis is Irish Aid through their development education funding scheme, with other NGOs and consultancies. Ongoing projects include training of teachers in conjunction with the School of Education at NUI Galway as well as in-service training, public seminars, training workshops and events on a variety of issues, Galway African Film Festival, and training of youth & community workers (for full details, annual reports etc. visit www.galwayowc.org). Most projects are carried out in partnership with other organisations including Huston School of Film & Digital Media, YouthWork Ireland and other organisations as appropriate.
GOWC’s mission is to create educational opportunities in Galway that develop a critical analysis of the unequal power relationships that historically and currently exist between diverse groups, both locally and globally. GOWC’s aim is to empower people through education, direct action, networking, outreach and provision of resources to create a world where all people have equality of rights, opportunities and respect. GOWC’s definition of development education is “a participatory, empowering and stimulating process that aims to expand the analysis of power, justice and equality that operates at both the local and global levels to challenge injustice and inspire solidarity actions”.
The GOWC carries out training of educators, youth and community workers as well as working directly with students, youth and community groups and the general public to provide in depth and up to date information on global development issues through workshops and resources in our centre.
by providing global and anti-racism perspectives by offering links to other development education organisations through our membership of IDEA and Dochas
A lot of our work includes anti-racism and interculturalism (we consider this an essential component in global solidarity work). We also run an annual African Film Festival aiming to bring African perspectives to an Irish Audience. The Festival has showcased a number of current films from Northern Africa and we would like to build on this by inviting directors and actors from that region to talk about democracy and diversity in their respective countries.