About Us
The Montgomery Development Education Centre was established over 20 years ago as the education section of Fair Trade Aberdeen (formerly Aberdeen's Third World Centre) which is a specialist fair trade outlet. We are now also the fully accredited Development Education Centre (DEC) for Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and the north-east of Scotland. 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 come from DFID, Aberdeen City Council and Oxfam.
We deliver a range of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses linked to these areas 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, videos, DVDs etc for loan; these supporting both content and methodology needs, linked to global citizenship and sustainable development education.
We have strong links with the Aberdeen Fair Trade Forum.
A copy of our latest Annual Report is available to view at the bottom of this page.
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 9.30am – 4.00pm
Thurs 1.30pm – 6.30pm
However, we are sometimes out on a school visit, 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.