Now, superheroes go to school, fight social perils

With challenges such as poverty and climate change to surmount, some of the world’s foremost celebrity activists are turning their focus to India, which will become the world’s most populous nation by 2022. Richard Curtis, the writer of such enjoyable films like Notting Hill and Mr Bean, and a United Nations Sustainable Development Advocate, is collaborating with Stan Lee and Graphic India to launch four superhero comics — featuring Chakra the Invincible and Mighty Girl — to drive home the UN’s global goals of access to quality education, gender equality, access to sanitation and clean water, and climate action. He explains how the campaign is faring.

How are you reaching out to children through your World’s Largest Lesson campaign?

The World’s Largest Lesson is focussed on making sure children and young people are educated and empowered by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aims to end global poverty by 2030. We are reaching children by working with organisations that already work with them, and then providing them with free, creative materials about the SDGs. These materials include comics in India, based around two new Super Heroes created by Stan Lee – Mighty Girl and Chakra the Invincible. Our main partner in India is GEMS Education, who run one of the largest schools network. Other organisations we are working with are Save the Children India, Magic Bus, Design for Change, and UNICEF.

What are the personal experiences and beliefs that have prompted you to join the United Nations and help spread awareness of the global goals?

I’ll just pick out three. I was raised in the Philippines when young, and I was deeply aware of how different my life was from the people who lived in corrugated huts by the side of the road. I went to Ethiopia during a famine in 1985, and saw sights that changed my life forever, such as young children starving. I swore I would do all I can to stop that happening. I think the Global Goals are the best plan on the table if you don’t make a long-term plan to solve the big issues, politics will always be driven by current crises - so the more that the world can focus on long-term change, in an organised way, the more chance we have to be the generation that fights injustice, ends extreme poverty and defeats the biggest threats of climate change. The UN’s SDGs are the world’s road map.

Is the World’s Largest Lesson reaching the target audience?

A volunteer teacher in Mumbai came across our materials online and started a new course of lesson about the SDGs, with a focus on gender equality and education, in children’s homeless shelters. The lessons have included the children writing their own version of a Chakra the Invincible and Mighty Girl comic. It shows we are managing to get our materials out there and because they are free for teachers to use, they are enabling children to be educated about these important issues, which no doubt would not happen if there were no free, engaging materials available.

India has its own unique set of problems and cultural practices which require specific strategies. Have you given thought to this?

Yes, we talk to local partners and children themselves, to get advice on issues they are facing and the best way to create material that children will engage with. We have developed lesson materials, which are specifically tailormade for India. The comics, animated films and lesson plans all focus on issues like lack of clean water and sanitation, and inequality between boys and girls. The characters of Mighty Girl and Chakra the Invincible are based on children from Bangalore for example, and throughout the comics they travel to rural and urban parts of India to explore issues related to the SDGs.