ICAE Academy of Lifelong Learning Advocacy - IALLA
General Objectives
To build the skills of educators and social movement activists in supporting adult learning for change, and to consolidate ICAE as a global network committed to that end, through an annual residential program on advocacy for adult learning.
Specific Objectives
1. To generate a broader vision on adult education within the framework of human rights, developing linkages with the most important globalization issues that are currently affecting the world.
2. To support the emergence of a new leadership for the global network of adult educators, and to secure the regeneration of ICAE.
3. To build networking capacity, the formation of new leaderships committed and trained to work as a global team, and committed to working through ICAE.
4. To establish a working group for reflection upon the process and the conceptual and thematic analysis.
Principles
The definition of the contents take into account the new learning needs emerging from the current global context.
At a time in which the current globalizing model is characterized by economic uncertainty, population displacement, war, the advance of fundamentalisms, the difficulties regarding multilateralism, and the greater interdependence in relation to all global policies affecting unequally the countries of the world, there is a pressing need to rethink deeply and critically the educational proposals at formal and informal levels, at all ages.
There is also a need to have an ethical approach within the framework of Human Rights and to develop teamwork capacity and skills at global level, instead of repeating what has been done for the past decades, which fostered competitiveness and individual work, and which does not allow to generate responses to extremely complex situations like the ones we are living.
Today it is no longer possible to think of a super team of a sole country, able to account for global situations. Today it is necessary to cultivate international teamwork, which would be able to recognize differences and generate synergies among this diversity of visions and skills, and which would have the capacity of generating new solutions and the subsequent advocacy for promoting change in the public policies at all levels: that is to say, the exercise of active citizenship at all levels of action, local and global.
We must generate an agile and proactive attitude in the participants, taking into account the unprecedented changing global times, whether participating in a campaign, whether promoting a research and other activities which could be fostered from global to local levels.
The education currently imparted is notoriously outdated so as to respond to these new situations.
Methodology
· The format will allow the harmonization of pedagogical progression and the learning process
· Alternation of complementary methodological proposals such as lectures, courses, workshops.
· Conceptual inputs of theoretical analysis will be combined with practical experiences, specially those of the participants and the host country: “learning from diversity”
· Special attention will be given to group dynamics, and work with the participants; group dynamics is part of the learning process.
· Students will have possibility of living together with several senior education leaders and thinkers, with an appropriate regional balance
P R O G R A M
WEEK 1
Convenor: Sergio Haddad[1]
Civil society
World Social Forum; civil society engagement with UN major policy conferences; and the influence exerted by new movements of the civil society such as peace movements, women’s movement, and environmental movements.
The proposal of this first week is to discuss the concept of civil society; the fight for and recognition of individual and collective rights; economic, social, cultural and environmental rights – SCER; the forms of articulation of civil society on the international stage; the history of action, both at the UN conferences and at the manifestations in Seattle, Prague, Genoa and at the World Social Forum; the discussion of perspectives and the nature of the alter-globalization movement and its educational meaning.
Civil Society
- Discussion on the concept of civil society
- Main actors, collective action, social movements and networks – civil society in movement
State, Civil Society and Rights
- Struggle of civil society to constitute and implement Human Rights in the light of Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights.
- Rights to equality and rights to difference
- Education as a human right
Globalization and resistance
- Action on the international stage – forms, limitations and differences with regard to the national stage
- UN world conferences
- Civil society action
- From Seattle to Porto Alegre – globalization of resistance and struggles
World Social Forum and Perspectives of the Movement
- Impacts of WSF
- Perspectives of the internationalization of the process
- the action of civil society as an educational process
WEEK 2
Convenor: Paul Belanger [2]
Challenging Globalization Impact through Lifelong Learning
The Global and Local Situation of the Right to Learn - Britten Manson
- Achievements and gaps (UNESCO 2002 report on the situation of the adults’ right to learn)[3],
- The ambiguous recognition of this “absolute UN priority” on Education For All: Jomtien 1990, CONFINTEA 1997, Dakar 2000, The Millennium Development Goals 2000-2015[4],
- The present significance of this situation for women and men having to participate actively on all fronts to protect and improve their conditions of life (ICAE Report).
Globalization and the Uncertain Governance of Education at World and Regional Levels
- Globalization: its central character: global free market, uneven development and growing gaps between nations and social groups.
- Globalization of learning environments,
- The agenda of multilateral organisations on lifelong learning and their impact: WB, WTO, OECD, EC, UNESCO, regional bodies.
The Global and Regional Theatre for Action (bridging with theme 3 on Advocacy)
- WSF
- UN and UNESCO
- The space and strategies for changes in relation with other social movements
- The role of regional and global networks in the present context
WEEK 3
Convenor: Gigi Francisco[5]
Active Citizenship and Strategies for Advocacy
Structural, Conjunctural and Intersectional Analysis: re-Visiting.
The objective of this session on globalization is to synthesize learning by facilitating the participants’ own critique of their consciousness raising techniques and methodologies, from a consideration of recent theoretical insights and action reflection arising from the following challenges:
(1) human rights framework (civil-political; economic, cultural & social rights)
(2) sustainable development (bio-diversity, production-consumption, lifestyles)
(3) intersection of gender, race & class (equity / justice)
(4) identity and sexual politics (cultures)
This will lead to the identification of areas where transformation of adult education
can/should take:
(1) How are we addressing these challenges in our adult education work?
(2) Are we able to integrate our efforts or do our efforts run parallel to one another (i.e. modules focused on specific concerns)?
(3) What capacities do we need to develop as adult educators so that we can effectively integrate these new challenges into our work?
Shifting spaces and politics in a period of uncertainty? (transnationalised politics and war): national, regional and international
The objective of this session on civil society responses is to synthesize learning by mapping out the terrain for social movement participation and advocacy at national, regional and international spheres taking into account the following:
(1) Who are old actors? What changes have they undergone?
(2) Who are new actors? What perspectives / advocacies do they bring?
(3) What are new processes and tensions arising from encounter between old and new actors?
From the mapping exercise, identify the following:
(1) What new strategies have emerged or are emerging?
(2) What new leadership forms and styles have emerged or are emerging?
(3) What new ethics of engagement have emerged or are emerging?
Collective construction of a new thinking for popular action
The session objective is to facilitate participants’ further reflection on context,
complexity and the world, and to engage them into a visioning of a new thinking for
popular action. It requires activities that will sharpen participants’ understanding of the
meaning of transformation in relation to:
(1) Cultural Diversity (Vision of Life from Culture) –International Understanding (Toward global citizenship?)
(2) Local (distinctive)-global (shared) norms (New legal paradigm?)
(3) Local-global actions (New Politics)
The session hopes to produce a list of elements under these four categories:
(1) information
(2) knowledge
(3) understanding
(4) values & ethics
Strategic advocacy for education (Part 1)
The session is intended to present an overview of strategic planning for advocacy and to guide the participants through the stages and steps in strategic advocacy planning. The output is an Advocacy Plan for (1) internal and (2) external advocacy.
(1) Given our three-day deepening & synthesis, what is the advocacy agenda in popular education (internal – toward civil society and external – toward governments/institutions)?
(2) What strategies can we use?
(3) Advocacy Plan.
Strategic advocacy for education (Part 2)
(4) Implementation Blueprint for the Advocacy Plan
(5) Monitoring and Evaluation of the Advocacy Plan
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