Amplifying the voice of youth: UNESCO’s Futures of Education Initiative
by Maria Theresa Villatoro
UNESCO’s “Futures of Education — Learning to Become” is a global initiative to reimagine how knowledge and learning can shape the future of humanity and the planet. In addition to protecting historical sites, improving the distribution of resources, and ensuring that every child has access to proper education, UNESCO also excels at report writing. Unfortunately, such reports often lack synergy between wording and acting.
With the hopes of including students, teachers, and education activists, UNESCO is conducting focus groups that will serve as an input for drafting the 2021 report, providing an agenda for discussion and action for policymakers and practitioners. To draft the report, UNESCO has appointed a high-level International Commission of thought-leaders, led for the first time by a woman from the global south. Her Excellency President Sahle-Work Zewde leads a diverse team of professionals from all walks of life, of which 44% are female, and 33% represent a racial minority.
Some might think that such diversity standards for a United Nations agency are banal. Still, for members from our community in Zambia, Turkey, Brazil, El Salvador, and dozens of other countries, such representation translated into a call for action.
As one of the initiative’s partners, Global Changemakers, hosted three focus group sessions engaging 102 participants. After the workshops, we asked our community to share what made this experience memorable. Here are some of the insights they shared:
- The uniqueness of participants’ experiences:Learning about changemakers’ struggle regarding access to education and its role while starting their own initiative challenged participants to consider action to solve their communities’ problems.
- The diversity and inclusion represented in the discussion sessions: The stories behind the GCM focus group represented the majority of continents and a diverse range of ages, professional backgrounds, and personal stories. However, the power of a shared purpose outnumbered the participants’ differences.
- Participants’ regard for education: A constant theme was the desire to participate in such discussions. Illustratively, in responses to a five-question survey, the need for more time to discuss the issues of knowledge creation and planetary sustainability popped up thirteen times.
This final point speaks not only for the importance of youth participation in policy-making but their desire to be part of the conversation and have their voices heard.
Opportunities like this one empower youth and foster skills indispensable in the renewed demand of skills in a post-Covid economy, such as empathy and the ability to work as a team even in a remote work environment. More importantly, connecting with this diverse pool of talent gave life to new partnerships, including the opportunity to teach refugees in South Sudan how to build robots while completing the national math curriculum.
Through STEM in a box, one of the 400 youth-led projects supported by Global Changemakers, 230+ youth in El Salvador and Nigeria have learned to build electric cars and hydraulic arms using cardboard and recycled materials. Although the link between education and poverty is complex, such initiatives highlight how education can be a catalyst to break the cycle of poverty and change the future of families and communities around the world.
After connecting during one of the focus group sessions, two participating changemakers met to discuss the possibility of a partnership. About a month later, with the shared purpose of providing the Kalobeyei Settlement’s youth a tech-oriented education focused on vocational skills, both teams are actively working on the first shipment of STEM in a box kits to the UNHCR camp. The UNESCOxGCM session served as a platform for this shared purpose to translate into action for solving local problems.
Our youth is ready to take action. We just need a platform to have our voices heard. Initiatives like this one not only enrich policy making but have a ripple effect on the participants’ call for action.
Global Changemakers has an unshakeable mission of supporting youth to create positive change in their communities. A global pioneer in supporting youth-led development, they have trained youth from over 180 countries and provided grants to over 360 youth-led projects, which have had a combined impact on over 6,2 million people. www.global-changemakers.net
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this article belong to the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editor or Global Changemakers.
