Estonia: Comics trainers for global education



The workshop was held at Mondo’s office in Tallinn. To the right Heidi Leino and Johanna Helin.

Mondo (www.mondo.org.ee) is one of the few NGOs in Estonia that is active in development cooperation. Mondo has project work in Afghanistan, Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda. Mondo is also in charge of several development education projects in Estonia. 

Mondo wanted to replicate in Estonia the successful Finnish global education project run by Nuorten akatemia (Youth Academy) since 2009 in schools. In the project, school visitors run 3-hour comics workshops on such global themes as climate change, fair trade, justice issues, and development advocacy. World Comics Finland has trained the Finnish school visitors in how to conduct workshops in schools, and now we were requested to train their Estonian colleagues.

The two-day workshop was held in early November and was facilitated by Heidi Leino and Leif Packalen from World Comics Finland. For the training, our basic grassroots comics manual was translated into Estonian. It will later be made available on our website.

As always, the participants in the workshop were delighted to learn the method of grassroots comics and they were eager to put their new skills into practice in their own projects. Johanna Helin, Manager for Mondo’s Global Education Centre, described its activities as ”very alternative” in the Estonian society.

A detail from Ivi Sutt’s comic on Estonian migrant labour below: A husband must go to Finland to find work and his children call him "uncle" when he visits Estonia on vacations. At the end of the story he decides to remain home, whatever it takes.

The comics of the workshop were put up in the corridor outside Mondo's office. 
Here the participants prepare themselves for the review session.