To mark this year’s International Women’s Day, UIL’s gender focal point, Samah Shalaby, highlights how her colleagues progress gender equality in their work
The UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL), located in Hamburg,
Germany, is one of UNESCO’s eight education institutes. As its name suggests,
UIL’s area of specialization is lifelong learning. Through its capacity-building
activities, knowledge sharing and dissemination of data, the Institute provides
support to UNESCO Member States in the field of lifelong learning with a focus
on learning ecosystems, skills for life and work, and inclusive learning. UIL operates
at regional, national and local levels to facilitate learning across sectors.
Through its partnerships, it works towards helping the global community achieve
the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 on inclusive, equitable and
quality education for all.
The UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development is an opportunity to create a culture of sustainable living. But it will only be successful if we find better ways to support and strengthen adult learning and education for sustainable development, argues Christiana Nikolitsa-Winter
The UNESCO
World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development takes place from 17
to 19 May 2021. While education at all levels has experienced unprecedented
interruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact on adult learning and
education (ALE) has been little considered, certainly when compared to schools
and universities. While the pandemic has highlighted the importance of ALE in
coping with and emerging from the crisis, it has also deprived adults around
the world of access to education, and presented providers with difficult challenges in maintaining their learning
offers, with a particularly, and by now depressingly familiar, negative impact on the poorest and least-advantaged.
It is important that we reflect on this and consider, in particular, the key
role of ALE in sustainable development and how we can foster it. I would like
to reflect briefly on the role of ALE in education for sustainable development
(ESD) and in building bridges to a future that is safe, fair, inclusive and
sustainable.
Sustainable
development begins with education. Agenda
21, adopted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 in Rio
de Janeiro, recognized the critical role that education plays in the transition to sustainable
development. Education is an essential tool in making individuals aware of the issue
of sustainability and providing them with related skills, while encouraging them
to take actions and find solutions to the local and global challenges we face. In
addition, education for sustainable development and citizenship education are
strongly linked. Yet, although the question of sustainability has risen to the
top of policy agendas worldwide, policy action is limited, particularly in
adult learning and education. Continue reading →
