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ADULTS’ RIGHT TO LEARN: CONVERGENCE,
SOLIDARITY AND ACTION
ICAE’s World Assembly is open to
all ICAE members, partners, friends as well as to all those networks aligned
closely with the adult education and learning movements promoting Adults’
Right to Learn.
The primary focus of this Assembly will be to provide a collective space to
strongly affirm the right of all to learn throughout life and to assert the
immense value of adult education and learning in enabling citizens to fight
poverty, inequality, discrimination and the exclusion of a big part of
humanity. We find it fitting to organise our Assembly alongside the World
Social Forum 2007: to demonstrate our solidarity with other social
movements for change and to underscore the strategic importance of adult
education in making another world possible.
The years since the last Assembly, in 2002, have clearly shown us the
interconnectedness between Adult Education / Adult Learning and various
efforts from other civil society networks. The Assembly will give us the
opportunity to strengthen this involvement while at the same time analyzing
and improving the particular contributions that Adult Education / Adult
Learning can make on the basis of their specificities and particular
knowledge.
This World Assembly marks a return to Africa after 30 years: ICAE’s first
Assembly was convened in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania in 1976. We return at the
beginning of the 21st
Century at the advent of a new African Renaissance with its promise to end
violence, elitism, corruption and poverty in the African continent and to
build a just and equitable order. This Assembly's return to Africa
demonstrates ICAE's commitment to actively support the daily struggles of
the continent’s people to build a better world that respects cultural
diversity and where all women and men could live with dignity, in peace.
The Assembly is also a civil society preparatory event for CONFINTEA VI that
will take place in 2009. It will provide as well the space for civil society
organisations to prepare our input into the EFA mid term review,
especially in relation to the adult education-related goals and targets, and
in asserting the crucial role of adult learning in achieving the MDGs
and other international social development targets the global community
committed to realize. The Assembly is envisaged to provide us with the
opportunity to analyze and propose concrete ways of jointly influencing
policy spaces and events that are key for promoting adult education and
learning.
Various commissions will be working during the Assembly to analyse the
challenges to Adult Education and Adult Learning in the current global
scenario, and to jointly explore strategic responses. These will also
address particular issues identified by ICAE members and partners during a
virtual seminar run by ICAE in April 2006. The topics commissions will be
working on are:
- HIV/AIDS, Health and Poverty
- Environment, Ecology and Sustainable Development
- Full and active citizenship: how much does AE
contribute to processes of democratization?
- Migration and Cultural Diversity: Where are we after
Durban? How to foster the “Intersectionality” approach?
- Adult Education and Solidarity Economy/Social Economy.
- Adult Learners’ Movement and Mobilization.
- Adult Education: Organisation and Financing
- Conflict Resolutions, Peace and Human Rights
- Adult Literacy: a fundamental right.
The deliberations of the commissions will be guided by common concerns with
respect to equality, poverty eradication, gender justice, recognition of the
particular needs and contributions of indigenous peoples, lesbians and gays,
bisexual and transgender people, people with disabilities, migrants, women,
youth, ethnic minorities, among other historically disadvantaged groups. The
discussions are also expected to highlight the specific contribution of
Adult Education / Adult Learning in overcoming various forms of
discrimination in varied contexts. Moreover, each Commission will be asked
to discuss, within their given areas of concern, civil society input and
interventions in critical global policy spaces especially the upcoming
CONFINTEA VI Conference in 2009, and the EFA and MDG mid-term review
processes.
Each commission will be facilitated by a regional association or ICAE
national member organisation in cooperation with other ICAE members and
partners.
There will also be two plenary sessions addressing cross-cutting concerns:
- Revisiting ICAE’s advocacy work within the global
and regional contexts. State accountability vis-à-vis AE/Adult Learning.
This debate will include looking at the weakness of the UN, the challenges
towards CONFINTEA VI, etc.
- Adult
Education - culture or structure? or culture and structure? Where should the
movement concentrate its focus -on embedding learning in the work of other
social movements, or in a focus on structured learning? What risks and what
possibilities lie with each strategy?
As a means to promote a better understanding of the reality of the host
country and the particular work that some of our partner organisations are
doing in Africa, there will be spaces for structured as well as informal
interactions with African organisations to coincide with the Assembly,
including study visits, organised in cooperation with our Kenyan hosts.
The World Assembly will be preceded by the Regional African Assembly and
will be followed, in the afternoon of the third day, by the General Assembly
of ICAE, devoted to ICAE governance and Constitutional matters.
You can join in the preparatory process of the Assembly though the
Commissions that have been formed for the preparation of each topic:
Commissions and organisations responsible:
- HIV/AIDS, Health and Poverty (Contact:
Margaret Wambete, Kenya Association of Teachers Living with HIV/AIDS,
wambete@yahoo.com;
ICAE, ana@icae.org.uy)
- Environment, Ecology, Sustainable Development (Contact: ICAE,
secretariat@icae.org.uy)
- Full and active citizenship: how much does AE contribute to processes of
democratization? (Contact: Maria Khan, ASPBAE,
aspbae@vsnl.com)
- Migration and Cultural Diversity: (Contact: Sue Waddington, EAEA,
sue.waddington@niace.org.uk)
- Solidarity and Social Economy (Contact: Iliana Pereira, REPEM,
economia@repem.org.uy)
- Adult Learners’ Movement (Contact: PALAAE,
buubadiop@yahoo.com
and KALA, mgathoni2002@yahoo.com)
- Adult Education: Organisation and Financing (Contact:
Heribert Hinzen, IIZ/DVV,
hinzen@iiz-dvv.de)
- Conflict Resolutions, Peace and Human Rights (Contact: REPEM Colombia)
- Adult Literacy : a fundamental right. (Contact: Maria Khan, ASPBAE,
aspbae@vsnl.com)
Please feel free to distribute this
information broadly and we look forward to your participation at the World
Assembly!
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