One of our big passions at Youth Workin’ It is broadening young people’s minds to the wider world around them. We’ve traveled quite a lot ourselves and so recognize the importance of understanding more about other countries and their cultures. (We love travel so much, we actually own this shower curtain!→)
Today’s youth work session plan idea is therefore one focused on World Awareness. There are many ways you could approach this, so feel free to borrow some or all of these ideas for your own youth group.
This activity will work best if you have a number of computers available for the youth to do some research online. Alternatively, if you know that they all have internet access on their cell phones that could work, as would doing the research in a library.
World Awareness Task
1) Country – Give each young person a different country to research. You could either pick countries they’ll probably know something about already like Italy, Australia, etc. Otherwise, consider choosing countries they’ll know little to nothing about – Tajekistan, Eritrea, Moldova, etc.
2) Research – Produce a worksheet with areas to research. This list could include:
- Capital city
- Population of country
- Flag
- National dishes
- Geographical terrain
- Climate
- GDP per capita (also explaining what this means)
- The cost of a Big Mac (and what the Big Mac Index is about)
- Currency
- Religion(s)
- Popular sport
- Time zone
- Language spoken
- An unusual fact
- Cost to fly there
3) Presentation – Have the youth present their findings to the rest of the group. This way, the youth learn about more than just their own country, plus it helps them work on their public speaking skills.
4) Extension – If you want to continue the World Awareness theme into future weeks, consider running some meal planning youth work sessions where you cook dishes from the countries they’ve researched
This activity can really assist in youth understanding more about the wider world around them, helping them to be more broad-minded and respectful of other nationalities and cultures.
If you’ve found this idea useful, you might also find our other youth work session plan ideas helpful.
Question: What other things about a country would you have your youth research? Please let us know in the comments below.
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