Global Contexts

Choosing a Global Context for your Project

Consider the following questions as you choose a global context through which to focus your project.

  • What do I want to achieve through my personal project?
  • What do I want others to understand through my work?
  • What impact do I want my project to have?
  • How can a specific context give greater purpose to my project?

If you will be organizing fundraising campaigns or events for an organization, you will explore the challenges that the organization address, such as pollution, climate change, endangered species, health, education, housing, food, human rights, minority rights, immigration, culture, arts, communication. Therefore, the global context for the project will often be determined by the organization’s cause.

The choice of the global context will significantly shift the perspective of the MYP project. See the tables below for examples of the impact global contexts have on the same topic or issue in the personal project.


Rap as a music genre

Solar energy devices


Identifying the global context for the project

The global context chosen by the student provides a context for inquiry and research for the project. Students choose only one global context to define their goal. In most cases other global contexts may inform the project or offer other perspectives, but the focus on one context will present opportunities that emerge through (self-imposed) limitations and give a specific focus to the project.

The table below shows some examples of the use of each global context for an MYP personal project.


Global Contexts Description and Example Explorations

Copy of Global Contexts.pdf