Call to Action: 6 weeks to raise awareness of malnutrition in Sudan among a class from Lycée Fieldgen

How to get secondary school students actively involved in a humanitarian issue?

For the second year running, MSF ran a module in the ‘sustainable development’ option at the Lycée Fieldgen, spread over 6 consecutive weeks, from 26 February to 2 April 2025. By working directly with students, our teams inform them about one or more of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the reality of humanitarian action and needs, and encourage them to discover their own power to act.

In order to actively engage the 25 students - aged between 15 and 18 - taking part in this option, we have chosen an exercise model that has already proved its worth: the Call to Action. In the first stage, the pupils are given the latest information on a crisis that has been forgotten and neglected by public opinion, based on the testimonies of staff involved in one of our projects. The second stage focuses on examples of mobilisation campaigns, which they can then use as inspiration to create their own awareness-raising materials. The choice of medium is free: poster, video, publication on social networks, audio recording, etc. The aim of the exercise is for everyone to take up the theme and think actively about how they could communicate about this crisis in order to make it known to as many people as possible and encourage them to take (re)action.

Malnutrition in Sudan: an alarming yet neglected crisis

Over the course of the 6-week course, the students learnt to identify MSF's missions and its operating methods, with a particular focus on neutrality and independence, essential concepts in the context of conflicts such as those in Sudan. As the vast majority of the students knew little about the current crisis in Sudan - despite it being the biggest crisis in the country's history - the first sessions enabled them to gain some background knowledge: the outbreak of the conflict in April 2023, the 12 million people displaced since the start of the crisis, the difficulties of access encountered by the few humanitarian actors still present in Sudan and, above all, the direct impact on the civilian population, particularly on pregnant women and children.

The fact that many children our age and even younger can't get enough to eat is quite shocking when you consider how we can feed ourselves here in Luxembourg.

Student from Lycée Fieldgen

Before embarking on the design of their awareness-raising campaign, the students were careful to assimilate the concepts essential to understanding malnutrition: its definition, the populations most affected, the notion of famine, the geographical areas most affected and the impact of violence on MSF's actions, as in the ZamZam camp, which led to the total cessation of medical operations.

MSF halts its actions in ZamZam 

Within a few weeks, 6 groups produced their own communication media to raise awareness among their friends and family, their teachers, secondary school students from other classes and, more generally, users of social networks and even strangers in the street. One group produced a poster displayed in the corridors of the Lycée Fieldgen, three others set about creating an account on a social network (TikTok or Instagram), and one group concentrated on recording audio content.

This was a long-term project, which enabled them to gain a new understanding of humanitarian action and to get involved in getting the word out about Sudan. Well done to them for their commitment!