The best part of working at Edge is seeing how different communities innovate. This is especially true of island communities. Their tight-knit nature and unique governance structures give them an agility that mainland education systems can only dream of. Of course, their small size presents challenges – from brain drains to acute environmental issues – but this is what forces them to become so resilient and adaptable. Edge has also always advocated for place-based education, which islands capture perfectly. That’s why our Island Education Network brings together islands from around the UK to share best practice. And in recent years, our involvement with Island Innovation’s Virtual Island Summits has further broadened the field, exposing us to incredible work from islands around the world too.
This year I was lucky enough to attend the two-day Island Youth Forum in the Caribbean. As locations go, it was not the worst week at the office! My journey began in Saint Lucia, home to an old friend – my first manager in London – who had returned there to retire. It was lovely to start the trip by reconnecting with someone who had set me on such a rewarding career path in the first place. While in Saint Lucia, I also met Angel Caglin, Executive Director of the Caribbean Innovation & Leadership Lab, which works to promote innovation across the region. Angel contributed to the 2022 Virtual Island Summit and her impressive work in the Caribbean continues. Like Edge, Angel leads efforts to incorporate teacher and youth voice in education policymaking, ensuring they have a platform to share their views with the right people. Alongside this – not to mention many other initiatives – Angel is tackling issues around gender and misogyny, mirroring my own reflections in a recent article on adolescent experiences with social media.
From Saint Lucia, I travelled to St. Kitts and Nevis for the start of the Island Youth Forum, part of the Global Sustainable Islands Summit. The Forum welcomed 160 young people from island communities around the Caribbean and across the world, brought here with support from the UN and Our Shared Ocean. Their enthusiasm was clear – although this is never unusual. But what stood out to me was the level of ministerial engagement. St. Kitts’ ministers didn’t simply turn up, deliver a speech then leave. Instead, they stayed, sat down with the young people and listened to their concerns and ideas. The delegation included the Minister of Sustainable Development and Geoffrey Hanley, St. Kitts’ Deputy Prime Minister and founder of its National Youth Parliament Association. While governance works on a different scale in these settings, this kind of intentional engagement from politicians was inspiring to see.
Over the next two days, I met countless fascinating people, including one man working on special needs education. He described how schools here are embedding project-based and experiential learning, with a focus on environment and sustainability. The Soufriere Special Education Centre in Saint Lucia offers a student-tended flower and vegetable garden, giving pupils regular hands-on interactions with nature. This reminded me of Edge’s recent dive into the Waldorf curriculum, which also connects young people with nature, fostering a lifelong appreciation for the natural world. The young people I met here were passionate about environmental awareness but also driven to act. One young Trinidadian had developed a device made from recycled plastic. It uses just two litres of grey water to wash a car – far less than conventional methods. His invention has already saved 50 million litres of fresh water and is now expanding across the Caribbean, to Texas, and even Africa.
Young people are running the franchise. This demonstrates that when they are empowered to do so, young people can become real agents of change. Frankly, we could all learn a lot from them. With policymaking in mind, the Forum also included a simulation – young people role-played as government or third-sector officials responding to a fictional hurricane. They had a lot of fun, but beyond basic engagement, like all strong PBL, it introduced real-world concepts while nurturing essential collaboration, communication, and problem-solving skills. Crucially, some of the young people went on the full summit after the Youth Forum, meaning that this work helped them to develop policy ideas to deliver in person to real policymakers.
One of our final activities was trekking into the rainforest with St. Kitts’ lead ranger. We planted seeds and learned how the forest supports the island’s fresh water supply. He explained that environmental degradation is already impacting the island’s future – a sobering realisation in what, to me, seemed such a pristine setting. This direct connection to the environment reminded me once again of the importance of place-based education in helping young people appreciate the health and wealth of nature, and to support their local communities. More than that, though, I came away with a sense that we are all in this together. Environment topics easily become an academic issue on the urbanised mainland, but here, I got to see firsthand the impact of our inaction.
It was humbling and reassuring to get a clear sense that island communities embody the ideals that Edge also promotes: experiential, place and project-based learning, youth voice, and tackling the challenges of our time.
What it most underscored, though, was that while building core skills is essential for employment, it is also essential for resilient communities and quality of life. Islands are leading the way here, in particular, young islanders. There is so much mainland education could learn. And if Edge can play even a small role in elevating these voices and experiences, then that’s almost contribution enough.