Introducing the Wednesday afternoons ‘Life Long Learning Webinar Series’

Keep your Wednesday’s free for our Life Long Learning opportunity. 

During the pandemic we have almost all been drawn into the wonderful world of webinars, video conferencing and online learning. We realised that not everyone has this opportunity and started to think of ways to raise money to support those who don’t. So, here is our story of how we are using webinars to both offer Lifelong Learning and raise money to support others. 

Our focus as an organisation is providing access to education for all children everywhere. To do this we need to share knowledge and learning, and raise funds too, and we’ve been developing ways to do both at the same time.

The partners and teachers we work with are doing amazing work across the globe, and we are trialling ways to share some of this learning so it’s available to an ever-widening audience. 

Our partners are giving their time to share educational webinars on useful topics for a wide range of people, and offer a percentage of any subsequent course sales to support the project work of the Foundation so that we can achieve Education for All children everywhere. 

The webinars are carefully selected to support teaching and learning and they may also support building business skills, creativity and wellbeing.

We need to raise enough funds to provide technology and network connectivity to ensure teachers and students across the world can access the same learning opportunities in a safe way that we may take for granted. We also know that in today’s climate many people can’t offer the support they could before. So, we are offering these useful, educational webinars on a ‘donate what you can’ basis so that all of our supporters gain something, and can help change the world at the same time.

As this story unfolds, we are finding that new people are discovering the Steve Sinnott Foundation through these webinars, and we are raising vital funds through the ‘Suggested Donation Tickets’.

Please have a look at the webinars coming up soon on the link below, they are almost always held on a Wednesday afternoon or evening, so keep your diary free and come and learn something invaluable, whilst helping others around the globe have access to the same opportunities.


You can see some of our past webinars here too:

Trauma Informed Coaching with Will Thomas - Wednesday 9th September 2020

In this webinar Will shared some very useful information about recognising trauma and understanding the grief cycle. We got to understand how this affects learning and the ability to relate to others. Knowing more about trauma helps us to understand the children in our classrooms and their ability to learn. Children affected by adverse childhood events, are at higher risk of trauma. This needs to be treated as there is a higher chance of adverse effects later in life too. To learn more, you can watch the video of the webinar here:

Zoom Basics with Mike Fleetham, Thinking Classrooms – Wednesday 16th September 2020

 

Mike Fleetham shared some Zoom basics knowhow in this webinar. Even those of us who have been using Zoom for some time learnt about extra features that we didn’t know about. But the session wasn’t just about features. It was a chance to discuss creative ways that Zoom can be used as a teaching tool, with many teachers on the call sharing ideas and ways to make lessons more fun and engaging too. Watch the video here:

The Power of Intuitive Art with Heather Lillieth – Wednesday 30th September 2020


Intuitive Art is a great way into, or back into, art and creative practice both for adults and children. For some reason many of us are are often put off art, thinking that we are not good enough but we can let go of all that in sessions like this. Intuitive art is about letting go of all the worry, and all the stresses of your day. It’s a time for play and having fun, and in so doing it recharges your batteries. For artists its great to loosen up. For others it’s a chance to play. For all of us it’s a chance to reconnect with ourselves. 

Storytelling with Impact for Business with B&G – Wednesday 7th October 2020


In this webinar we explored the importance of stories for organisations. Stories have an emotional impact, they create connection and empathy, we remember them and it’s how we learn. They describe stories as “packaged wisdom”, the very definition of a story is that it is about change. They shared many stories about projects they have done to illustrate this idea. Personally, I will remember the story about the Children’s Republic of Shoreditch!

Communicating Through Quiet Mind Poetry – Wednesday 14th October 2020


This interactive webinar created the opportunity to work together to create two poems. Each participant brough a piece of nature to the webinar, where we explored the qualities of each piece and then worked together to combine ideas and create a poem. It was refreshing to break rules, work together and combine different things and ideas together. 

Business Impact with Professional Audio – Wednesday 21st October 2020

 

Sound quality is often overlooked in digital productions. But with more of us now attending all business meetings online in video conferences bad sound quality can make the difference between a bad meeting experience and a great one. During the pandemic many organisations started to look at what they could create online to serve their communities. Podcasts, Webinars, Videos and Zoom workshops sprouted up everywhere, and the sound quality was often overlooked. We invited Pierre-Nicolas Schmitt of Sonata Academy to share his knowledge with us to help us all get better quality sound.

The Steve Sinnott Foundation • September 14, 2020

36 Bicycles. Countless Futures in The Gambia.

By Ann Beatty • May 20, 2026
How a simple act of practical solidarity is transforming the journey to school in The Gambia’s Central River Region North Policies have been written. Schools have been built. Yet for many children in The Gambia’s Central River Region North, access to education is still measured in kilometres, not opportunity. 

Education for Hope in Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous Times

By Laura Griffin • May 13, 2026
‘In a single hour vast tracts of shaded woodland became a jumble of torn trees and upturned soil, exposed to the glare of the summer sun. Such land-clearing events are rare, but forests exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of disaster. I’m told that the Chinese character for ‘catastrophe’ is the same as that which represents the word ‘opportunity’. And, the blowdown, while catastrophic, presented opportunities for many species.’ (Wall Kimmerer, 2003: 89). In the context of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (Stein, 2021) what kinds of education for hope might support children’s and young people’s critical engagement in local and global issues? In the spirit of exploring the possibilities of hope further, this short article focuses on the area of global citizenship and sustainabilityrelated education. It will briefly open by sharing commonalities across pedagogical approaches that take up the concept and act of hope more critically, and close by offering reflective questions for educators, with suggestions for further reading. Perhaps it is a kind of hope that is grounded in the present, in future reimagining(s), in ethical solidarity, and an acknowledgement of our deep entanglement with the living metabolism of planet earth 1 our singular home (UNESCO, 2021); a hope that engages with complex root causes and lived realities of multiple overlapping crises in critically reflexive and contextually relevant ways. As McCloskey notes, ‘Hope can fire our collective imagination and critical consciousness as a mainspring to activism and intervention in the world.’ (2025: 3). Commonalities across critical pedagogical approaches to hope include: Acknowledging the context of a ‘seamless single story of progress, development and human evolution’ (Andreotti, V.D.O., 2021b Relating to social and ecological justice and the wellbeing of people and planet Using participatory, action-orientated and inquiry-based learning processes Exploring diverse worldviews and perspectives Practising grounding in the present with opening up possibilities for change (relational, embodied, response-able 2 ) Experiencing ‘struggle’ in different forms (dialogical, selfreflexive, open-ended) Engaging individual and collective agency, action and activism Looking for lifelong and life-wide learning and unlearning. 1 See ‘Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness’, in Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. 2021a 2 See ‘Crossing Borders’ in 2 Depth Education “Depth Education and the Possibility of GCE Otherwise, 2021b. Source: Andreotti, V. 2021a & 2021b., Atif, A. (2025)., Bourn, D. 2021., Bryan. A. and Mochizuki,Y., 2024., Giroux, H.A. 2025., Meade, E. 2025. Whilst engaging in the concept and act of hope more critically reflect upon: What kinds of education for hope might you explore further and why? How might you provide generative spaces for engaging in diverse worldviews and perspectives? In what ways can you facilitate individual and collective agency? How might you support learners’ practice grounding in the present in order to relate differently? In what ways can you support learners in navigating complex root causes and lived realities of local and global issues? As Chief Ninawa Hini Kui affirms, ‘The future depends much less on the images we project ahead than on our capacity to repair relations and build relationships differently in the present.’ (Andreotti et al, 2023: 73. An invitation for further reading: Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future . d’Abreu, C., Belgeonne, C., Bourn, D. and Hatley, J. (2025) ‘Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future’. DERC Research Paper 24. London: UCL Institute of Education. Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism. Machado de Oliveira Andreotti, V. (2021a) ‘Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism’ , London: Penguin Random House. Development Education and Hope . McCloskey, S. (2025). (ed) ‘Development Education and Hope’. ‘Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review’ , Vol. 41, Autumn. Centre for Global Education, Belfast. Link to and download the full reference list here

I heard it said today by a friend that “You learn a language best when you use it to speak and write about things that are important to you. ”

By Susan Piper • May 6, 2026
This summed up to me about why I volunteer for the Hands Up Project. HUP is a charity trust which, through its network of volunteers, connects children around the world with young people in Palestine. By means of online interaction, drama and storytelling activities, it enables the use of creativity and selfexpression to promote mutual understanding, personal growth, and the development of English language skills. I joined HUP in 2020 during COVID. After going to Palestine in 2017, I wanted to get more involved in working with Palestinian children in schools. HUP gave me the opportunity to link up with schools in the West Bank and Gaza. Every week I’d tell them stories from all over the world, then we’d discuss it, play games and I’d get them to retell it. Sometimes we would work from their coursebook English for Palestine’ in mutual team teaching sessions with their teacher. The simple act of telling a story became much more than entertainment. It became connection, healing, and a bridge to the world beyond their immediate reality to help them improve their language skills, and to give them a platform to speak about their lives in a language that connects them to people everywhere. I loved it, every week, seeing their smiling faces on the screen and building long lasting friendships with their teachers. I even went to Gaza in 2023 and met some of the kids I’d only seen on Zoom. It was a beautiful experience and something I will never forget. As hostilities escalated, I lost contact with everyone. I thought about where the kids were and what had happened to them. As I watched schools being bombed, universities flattened, and people killed in their thousands, I thought about where the kids I’d met were and what was happening to them. I kept in contact with many of the teachers I knew and heard daily news of displacement, destruction, hunger and bombing. Recently, I’ve started to link up again with children in Gaza, and it feels wonderful to be back helping them learn after being denied an education for over two years. Connecting with children in Palestine is more than just words. When a child in Palestine confidently tells their story to someone on the other side of the world, bridges are built, empathy grows, and the world gains a fuller picture of childhood in contexts far from peace and privilege. My work with these children is rooted in the belief that education and voice are inseparable. Through storytelling and English language learning, I witness children not just learning new vocabulary, but reclaiming their narratives, believing in their potential, and finding human connection in a world they perceive has abandoned them. And more than anything, this work reminds us all that children — everywhere — deserve to learn, to speak, and to be heard. Links to HUP information, books and resources: The Hands Up Project BY SUSAN PIPER Susan Piper is currently an ESOL teacher in Oldham, Greater Manchester and has worked in education for over 30 years. She is also a volunteer for the Hands Up Project and is the International Solidarity Officer and President of her NEU district. She believes in quality education for all and aims to make her lessons creative and inclusive so that effective language learning can take place.