About Us
The Montgomery Development Education Centre was established over 20 years ago as the education section of Aberdeen's Third World Centre (TWC) - at that time Aberdeen's original fair trade outlet and still totally committed to fair trade and global justice issues. The aims of the Montgomery DEC are :
to raise awareness and promote understanding of global concerns and
to enable active global citizenship throughout the community.
Education for global citizenship, concerning global issues such as sustainable development, interdependence, rights and responsibilities, causes of poverty and equity/justice is the paramount role of the centre together with the equipping of people of all ages to take an active role in challenging and changing the inequalities present in our world.
We are now also the fully accredited Development Education Centre (DEC) for Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and the north-east of Scotland. Locally MDEC education staff work with Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire schools, teachers and educationalists, Aberdeen University and the Aberdeen City Fairtrade Campaign
We are members of the Scottish-wide Development Education network - International Development Education Association of Scotland (IDEAS) working alongside the other five Scottish DECs and education officers from agencies such as Oxfam, Amnesty, WWF etc - both at policy and practice levels to help embed education for global citizenship and sustainable development within Scottish formal education. Our main sources of funding at present come from DFID, Aberdeen City Council and Oxfam.
At the moment we are a partner in the national IDEAS Global Learning Project (funded by DFID) that is supporting schools develop and measure the impact of global citizenship education. We are also working with four local schools developing audit mechanisms to help improvement planning and embedding of global citizenship across the ir schools. This is now to be used with Highland schools as well.
We develop and deliver a range of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses for teachers of pupils from age 3 years to secondary levels. These courses are offered both through Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Moray local authorities and also independently to teachers, schools and cluster groups, and pre-school groups.
All of our courses promote active and participatory learning methodology to support development of a Curriculum for Excellence. At the same time they illustrate how curricular areas, cross-cutting themes and whole school initiatives can be enhanced by including a global dimension, global citizenship and sustainable development education.
The Montgomery Centre is also an educational resource centre - library - offering an extensive range of teacher guides and classroom packs, photo packs, storybooks, DVDs etc for loan; these supporting both content and methodology needs, linked to global citizenship and sustainable development education. These are also available to any member of the local community.
Regular newsletters - primary and secondary are available for schools. These are sent out to all Aberdeen schools and all members of our MDEC info email group.
Unfortunately Aberdeenshire schools are no longer being sent the newsletter direct from their central office SO PLEASE EMAIL US to have your name added to the news and info email group. This also applies to any other teachers wanting the newsletter sent directly to them. This way you will not miss out on getting info on resources, free supported school projects etc
We have strong links with the Aberdeen Fair Trade Forum - see our Fair Trade and Resource pages for more info and ideas.
To view a text only copy of our latest Annual Report click here . Hard copies of this and previous reports, as well as copies of our audited accounts can be obtained by contacting the centre .
Development Education
Development Education is an active and participatory learning process, which enables people to understand the links between their own lives and those of people throughout the world. In a changing global society, which is diverse and interdependent, it aims to:
enable people to understand the links between their own lives and those of people throughout the world;
increase understanding of the economic, social, political and environmental forces which shape our lives;
develop skills, attitudes and values which enable people to work together to bring about change and take control of their own lives;
promote the voices and viewpoints who are excluded from an equal share in the benefits of human development internationally;
work towards achieving a more just and sustainable world in which power and resources are more equitably shared.
Where to find us
Our office is within the Queen Street Church building in Aberdeen. The entrance is on Shoe lane, just opposite the side door of the Lemon Tree Arts Centre. Please note that you can not access the centre by car from West North Street, only by Queen St, off Broad St.
79 Queen Street
Aberdeen
AB10 1AN
Tel: 01224 620111
Email: montgomerydec@btconnect.com
During term time we are generally open
Mon – Wed 10am – 5.00pm
Thurs 2.00pm – 6.15pm
However, we are sometimes out on a school visit or delivering a CPD session, so it is always best to contact us to check the office is staffed if you plan to visit us. We stay open late on a Thursday evening to enable teachers to pop in to browse and borrow/return resources.