Who's behind Citizen Schools?

The Citizen Organising Foundation

The Citizen Organising Foundation (COF) is a registered charity whose mission is to create a network of informed and organised citizens who act responsibly in the public life of their communities and are able to influence, for the common good, decisions which impact on their communities. Through its Training Institute, over the past ten years COF has trained over 2000 leaders from a broad range of community-based organisations across the UK and beyond. This training has helped communities effectively campaign for and initiate change - including ethical guarantees for the 2012 Olympics, £20million for low-paid workers in London through the Living Wage Campaign, and a commission of enquiry into service provision by the Immigration and Nationality Directorate at Lunar House, Croydon.

London Citizens

COF trains professional community organisers to begin the task of creating broad based alliances between diverse organisations who work together for change and the common good in locations across the UK. In London, this coalition is London Citizens - 130 schools, universities, youth groups, churches, mosques, trade unions and community groups whose members come together to take action to improve their communities. The London Citizen Schools Alliance represents all the schools and young people's groups who are members of London Citizens.

Ben Hammond, Lead Organiser

Employed by COF to lead their work with schools is Ben Hammond, former head of Citizenship at Deptford Green School, south east London. Deptford Green has been described as a ‘pioneering’ citizenship school, and was the first specialist Citizenship school in the UK. As citizenship co-ordinator, one third of Ben’s work was dedicated to outreach work, teaching educationalists across the UK in best practice citizenship education.

Ben is also one of three London Citizenship Advisors for the Association for Citizenship Teaching (ACT). Through ACT, Ben co-ordinates the London Citizenship Teaching Network - a network for teachers across the capital which seeks to support the teaching of Citizenship in London schools through termly training and sharing, an online forum, and local school linking.

Prior to his work at Deptford Green and with COF, Ben spent a year working in a refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border as a teacher trainer and language teacher with Burmese refugees, and through outreach in the UK has worked with schools and young people to develop global citizenship education for the last eight years.

Other Partners

As the professional subject association for citizenship education, the Association for Citizenship Teaching are working in collaboration with Citizen Schools over the 2009-2010 academic year to develop the Citizen Schools Award.

The Citizenship Foundation are collaborating with Citizen Schools on both the Citizen Schools Award (Tony Breslin, Chief Executive, first coined the term 'Citizenship-Rich' school, and developed its meaning), and the Citizen Schools pathway (which utilises the Citizenship Foundation's 'Citizenship Manifesto' initiative.