Photo: Positive or negative headlines? A selection of newspapers used by post primary teachers testing out media literacy activities from the Facts Matter resource workshop at the WorldWise Global Schools conference, in Castletown, Co. Laois January 2025
Perspectives on how we read events and ideas change over time. These stories shape how we understand the world around us as events change or new ideas and information emerge.
From producing education materials, learning guides to action-research, 80:20 designs and develops user-centred resources which are responsive and current, addressing a range of human development and human rights issues by featuring the lives and voices of people from the global south.
80:20 Development in an Unequal World
The 80-20 Development in an Unequal World series introduces, explores and challenges key issues and daily realities in human development, human rights and sustainability in our increasingly unequal world.
Launched during an era of rising inequalities, the global challenges of addressing climate change and during the formative years of the global goals for sustainable development, 80:20 Development in an Unequal World seeks to make human rights realities and global issues accessible as an agenda that we must not only learn but also dare to teach.
Project Update
Production on the 8th edition has started.
A digital edition, new cartoons, needs-assessment sessions and workshops are taking place.
Launch period: 2026.
7th Edition (current edition)
Co-published by 80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World (Ireland) and the New Internationalist (UK), the 7th edition of 80-20 Development in an Unequal World:
- Provides a comprehensive introduction to the many key challenges the world faces today
- Explores several cross-cutting issues within development: poverty, climate change (and climate justice), sustainability women’s rights (and wrongs), human rights and key issues of focus such as unfair trade and the economics and politics of inequality and overseas aid, the current economic and financial system, understanding migration and the nature of activism
- Is driven by stories, illustrations, introductory overviews of a key issue, examining global trends and by posing moral dilemmas across each of its 15 chapters
- Critically reviews recent international agreements such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement on climate change
- Is backed up with a suite of educational support materials (coming soon).
- Is written and illustrated by an international group of authors and educationalists and has been completely revised and updated for the 7th edition as an invaluable primer for use in a variety of educational contexts
developmenteducation.ie is an online resource focused on the unequal and unjust shape of the world today.
It offers resources to stimulate debate and discussion about the issues and challenges we face and which encourage us to make decisions about the type of world we need and want to create.
It is a place for primary and post primary teachers, youth workers, adult and community educators and those with an interest in development, sustainability and human rights.
Resources Library
Members community area
developmenteducation.ie is led by a consortium of organisations including Aidlink, Concern Worldwide, the Irish Development Education Association, the National Youth Council of Ireland, Self Help Africa, Trócaire and 80:20.
The 10 Myths About….pocket-book series looks to sort facts from fiction on key global development, human rights and justice issues
Posters
Who doesn’t love a poster?
Posters spark conversations. They are an opening, an invitation to understand, explore and debate.
Exploring Genocide
The resource Exploring Genocide outlines a development education and human rights eduction project conducted in two phases that explores the reality of genocide.
The first phase was conducted in 2004 in East Belfast with students from Orangefield High School and Presentation College, Bray who developed an art mural to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda.
The second phase took place in 2007 where students from Bray and Crumlin revisited the mural to explore the topic of genocide in the context of the debate around the killings in Darfur.
Exploring Genocide: Educational Issues and Challenges
Format: Paperback | 24 pages and x2 posters
Publication date: 2007
Publisher: 80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World
ISBN: 978-0-9554263-3-9
Publication City/Country: Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland
For those of us living in Ireland, studying the phenomenon of genocide is deeply disturbing for a variety of reasons. While the character and scale of killing in Northern Ireland (and throughout the island) has remained limited, many dimensions of our own history remain deeply challenging. The reality is that many of the worst genocides have occurred in Europe and at the hands of Europeans.
Project Update
Exploring Genocide: Second Edition
The second edition of is development and is forthcoming in early 2026.
New materials will include:
the 10 Stages of Genocide
Exploring the concept of ‘Never Again’ and the question of ‘intent’
Recent cases of Genocide
Art-based responses to Genocide
Tools for critical media literacy, reading headlines and how propaganda works
Facts Matter
Facts Matter: A Guide to Building Critical Media Literacy in Today’s World is an introductory guide for adult literacy and adult education practitioners who wish to build their students’ knowledge, understanding, skills and confidence in critical thinking, media and digital literacy.
The guide also supports tutors to engage with what it means to live in an increasingly unequal world and to invite students to question and challenge this.
Project partner: The National Adult Literacy Agency (NALA)
Beyond the Click
#BeyondTheClick is a development education toolkit for educators that supports exploration of digital landscapes and tools (social media, digital tools etc.) and how these can be used to in education for sustainable development in a human rights and justice context in a world of deep (and deepening) inequality.
#BeyondTheClick toolkit is produced as part of a broad collaboration led by 80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World with the Edmund Rice Centre for Justice and Community Education, Concern Worldwide and the Irish Development Education Association.
