The Bridge 47 – Building Global Citizenship project comes to an end at the end of July. In the last three years and ten months, from October 2017 to July 2021, the Bridge 47 team has worked to mobilise global civil society to take action for sustainable development and global justice with the help of Global Citizenship Education. To do this, we have received support from the European Commission through the DEAR-programme.

The Bridge 47 journey, however, started much earlier, when Rilli Lappalainen (Fingo) and Robbie Guevara (ICAE) joined the UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development in Nagoya 2014. As they were crossing a bridge in Nagoya, they discussed the importance of building bridges between Global Citizenship Education and Education for Sustainable Development, and the Bridge 47 Network was founded. The first Bridge 47 webinar was in fact organised as early as December 2015, as a DARE-talk in the framework of DEEEP4.

The Bridge 47 project, which started a couple of years later in 2017, created a wonderful opportunity to continue to build and strengthen the Bridge 47 Network. The recently concluded impact assessment of the project recognises that the Bridge 47 project offered a space where a community, a movement could flourish. It allowed tensions to be explored, without necessarily aiming to resolve them, but paving way for deeper mutual understanding. According to the impact assessment, we ‘connected dots’, brought people from various sectors and with different roles together and created opportunities for co-creation and synergies.

We are very proud of our work in the Bridge 47 project. We have, among others:

• Hosted more than 700 people at our global network events, among others, at the Envision 4.7 conference
• Hosted more than 1500 people at our advocacy events, including at three official HLPF side events
• Sparked national policy change in a numbers of countries – among others, the new GEAR-programme for civil society in Bulgaria
• Inspired 21 partnerships to take action for GCE – among others, the National Health Service in Scotland, Deloitte Ireland, an Estonian TV channel and the Latvian Museum Association – and shared our learnings from this journey
• Facilitated exchange between civil society and academia, which inspired academic articles
• Reached more than 500 000 people with our Annual GCE events
• Been featured in almost 60 media articles, among others, in Forbes
• Created a mobile game and an accompanying teacher’s manual
• Launched a MOOC on Global Citizenship Education
• Funded 42 local small-scale GCE projects
• Trained more than 600 people in GCE, among others, through our Transformative Learning Journey, which some have described as life-changing

As the project is now coming to an end, I would like to take a moment to thank all our friends and colleagues for joining us on this remarkable journey and for engaging with the Bridge 47 Network and project. All experiences and expertise that you have brought into our work, among others, via our 4.7 policy working groups, have been crucial for our mission to advance transformative education and SDG Target 4.7.

I would like to take a moment also to thank the Bridge 47 Team, many of which are concluding their work in July. The impact assessment recognises that the work of Bridge 47 has been characterised by its quality, the authenticity of staff, a welcoming attitude to various actors, as ‘state of the art’ and innovative in facilitation, and allowing for intellectual as well as creative exchanges. I am deeply grateful to the Bridge 47 Team for all the commitment and heart they have put in to our work.

Even though the project is coming to an end, the journey will continue. The organisations behind the Bridge 47 project have committed to continue facilitating the Bridge 47 Network. We will, among others, continue to facilitate exchange on various topics in the Bridge 47 Network, including in our 4.7 policy working groups. The Bridge 47 communications channels will stay live, and we will continue advocating for SDG Target 4.7 in European and global policies, among others at the UNESCO Forum on Transformative Education for Sustainable Development, Global Citizenship, Health and Well-being later this year.

We want to continue this journey together with you – the Bridge 47 Network members. Now more than ever, we rely on your continued commitment, experience and expertise, in advancing our joint mission for transformative education and SDG Target 4.7. We are looking forward to many more years of joint activities and impact in the framework of the Bridge 47 Network.