ECO-UNESCO's Seminar Series: Exploring Good Practice in Education for Sustainable Development
Presentation by Elaine Nevin, ECO-UNESCO's National Director, on Education for Sustainable Development.
About this presentation:
In October 2009, ECO-UNESCO held the seminar Exploring Good Practice in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The seminar allowed participants to engage with organisations and initiatives which are leading in the field of Education for Sustainable Development in Ireland and internationally.
The keynote speaker Andy Griggs (Environmental Education Forum) gave a presentation on Good Practice in Education for Sustainable Development. ECO-UNESCO's National Director, Elaine Nevin, opened the day with a presentation on Education for Sustainable Development.
6. ESD – a Global Response Decade 2005 – 2014 has been designated by the UN as the UN decade of Education for Sustainable Development Lead agent -UNESCO
15. Exploring Good Practice in Education for Sustainable Development Keynote address Andy Griggs, Co-ordinator Environmental Education Forum Northern Ireland
Brief about who we are and what we do On behalf of ECO-UNESCO I’d like to welcome you here to day to ECO-UNESCO’s Education for Sustainable Development Seminar on Good Practice in Education for Sustainable development. We’re delighted to be hosting this Seminar today because we have been promoting the importance of ESD since 1998 – through a variety of our programmes.
Slide 1-photographs – explain about ECO-UNESCO ECO-UNESCO is Irelands’ environmental education and youth organization affiliated to the World Federation of UNESCO clubs centres and associations. We have been working in the field of environmental education since 1986 and have been running a wide range of programmes aimed at raising environmental awareness and understanding in young people on environmental issues such as waste, energy, biodiversity and climate change. These programmes include: the Young Environmentalist Awards, ECO-UNESCO Clubs, National Youth ECO forum; Training programmes including a FETAC courses on SD.
Slide 2 - Various programmes – what we do Young Environmentalist Awards – empowers young people at a local level to participate in local action projects ECO-UNESCO Clubs National Youth ECO Forum – Climate change – from a local to a global perspective Training courses – FETAC – SD programme
Slide 3 – History of Development Education in ECO-UNESCO History of dev ed in eco-unesco – had been working in field of dev ed since 1998 on a variety of dev ed projects and programmes – always bringing a global perspective to the work that we have done. Developed a development education strategy in 2006 where we defined the work that we did as education for sustainable development. This for us was important as we felt that the traditional definition of development education was too narrow and didn’t encompass what it was that we did. The ESD Research Project with COMHAR The Department of Education and Science – development of the National Strategy on ESD Since then we have worked on a variety of educational projects and initiatives on education for sustainable development aimed at developing young people and raising awareness of what we can do to achieve a sustainable lifestyle. We ran two stakeholder consultations in 2005 in conjunction with Cultivate to promote the UN decade of Education for Sustainable Development. In 2007 we carried out a research project for COMHAR the sustainable development council on Education for Sustainable Development in Ireland to highlighted good practice projects in Ireland. In 2007 we worked with the Department of Education and Science on the consultation for the development of a national strategy on education for sustainable development which built on the previous work carried out as part of the ESD Research project once again highlighted good practice projects on ESD.
From a global perspective up until the UN Decade for ESD there had been many initiatives that sought to promote sustainable practices and education for sustainable development. The provision of a definition for ESD in a way tried to bring many of the traditions together – thus trying to promote more cross-over between the variety of adjectival educations. The UN Decade of education for sustainable development began in 2005. This in a way has been one of the global educational responses to global environmental issues. The UN Decade of ESD promotes the development of national strategies in ESD in countries all over the world – many countries have responded by developing national strategies in Education for sustainable development and by implementation action plans which have included elements of formal education and non-formal education. There have also been some examples of esd and campaigning used hand in hand.
From ECO-UNESCO’s perspective, we take a broad view on what ESD is. For us education for sustainable development is about educating and empowering people to make positive choices which encourage environmental protection, poverty reduction, gender equality as well as personal and local connections to global issues. So for us as ESD practicioners there are ways that we use to evaluate and monitor our programmes in terms of ESD. Normally based on UNECE guidelines. For us definitions of Good practice in Education for Sustainable Development have been defined by the UNECE Strategy. This is the organization who along side the United Nations designated 2004 to 2015 as being the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. UNESCO is the lead agent for the promotion of the UN decade of ESD on a global perspective.
Why we are running the ESD Seminar today - part of Irish Aid programme entitled ‘Youth for Sustainable Development’ – the programme has a number of elements A youth peer education programme – aimed at training young people to work with their peers to encourage others to live and act more sustainably and to consider others. Three one-day training programmes – including Sustain It – a whole organization approach to ESD; youth work and sustainability and peer education and sustainability. Sharing good practice – to host a seminar and a conference on Education for Sustainable Development.
training young people up to be youth peer educators. We have over 30 young people participating in this years YSD programme with over 8 young people who are on our peer educator ‘graduates’ programme. These young people are now working with their peers on education for sustainable development. The UNECE have requested good practice projects from different countries – the ECO-UNESCO Youth for Sustainable Development Programme has been selected by the UNECE as a good practice project – Jerrieanne Sullivan ECO-UNESCO’s project officer will be facilitating a workshop on the peer education programme later on this afternoon.
Providing an opportunity to explore what ‘Good Practice in Education for Sustainable development means from a Global and an Irish context. Providing opportunities for those involved in Education for Sustainable Development; development education and environmental education as well as practicioners involved in youth work to come together to begin explorations of some examples of good practice on the ground.
We are delighted to welcome a number of people and organizations who are helping us out today Andy Griggs from the EEF in Northern Ireland who will be sharing his experience from Northern Ireland. We have a number of workshops running in the afternoon; our first workshop is being run by CELT an organization who work in the field of practical environmental education and conservation work. National Youth Council of Ireland is facilitating our second workshop – in particular the Coordinator of the National Youth Development Education programme ECO-UNESCO is facilitating the third workshop– our Youth for Sustainable Development Programme – the YSD programme Ask Graham to come up to explain the post card idea to the group – this Acknowledge Irish aid for support of the programme.
Brief about who we are and what we do On behalf of ECO-UNESCO I’d like to welcome you here to day to ECO-UNESCO’s Education for Sustainable Development Seminar on Good Practice in Education for Sustainable development. We’re delighted to be hosting this Seminar today because we have been promoting the importance of ESD since 1998 – through a variety of our programmes.