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2.- DECLARATION TO THE HEADS OF STATE
AND GOVERNMENT PARTICIPATING AT THE XVI IBEROAMERICAN SUMMIT
……………………………………
1.- INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE AND STUDY TOUR ON ADULT EDUCATION FOR LEARNING SOCIETIES- ASIAN AND EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES FOR A GLOBALIZED WORLD.
ICAE has
joined EAEA, IIZ-DVV, ASPBAE and the Chinese national association, CAEA, to
organize an International Conference on Adult Education in Learning
Societies. Beijing, China October 2006 Conference Report and Statement
October 28 to November 4, 2006 Beijing, China
Conference Context
To call attention to the importance of adult education in enabling people and societies to confront the challenges of the new millennium, more than one hundred and twenty participants from about forty different countries came together in Beijing, China, from October 28 to November 4, 2006 for the International Conference and Study Tour on Adult Education for Learning Societies - Asian and European Perspectives for a Globalized World, to inform and learn from each other, to exchange ideas and experiences, and to search for ways to cooperate closer in the future.
Participants represented diverse experiences of professional associations, non-governmental and community based organizations, governments, and universities.
The success of the conference benefited immensely from the expertise and experience of participants from a parallel East and South East Asian Women’s Workshop on Advocacy for Women’s Education. Their contributions in many of the joint sessions informed the conference discussions with women’s perspectives and analysis, and expanded women’s share of roles and responsibilities during the conference.
The conference was jointly organized by the Asian-South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education (ASPBAE), the Chinese Adult Education Association (CAEA), the European Association for the Education of Adults (EAEA) and the German Adult Education Association (DVV). Cooperating partners at the global level were the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) and the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE), and from within China, the National Institute for Educational Research (CNIER) and the Beijing Academy of Educational Sciences (BAES).
In planning and implementing this event, the organizers built on recent meetings of adult educators like the EAEA Lillehammer conference in November 2005, the DVV Berlin convention in May 2006, and the ICAE Montevideo conference in June 2006 –towards two major forthcoming events: the ICAE World Assembly in Nairobi in January 2007, and UNESCO’s 2009 Confintea VI which has its regional preparatory conferences already scheduled in 2008.
It is never too late to learn! (Adult education as developmental thrust)
Adult education is part of learning throughout life, or as an ancient proverb states: Learning starts in the womb and ends in the tomb. The European Commission is currently preparing a communication on adult learning with a clear message: it is never too late to learn. Learning societies of today need lifelong learning, and they need structures to support learning, education and training throughout the lifetime, while you are a child, as younger or older adult, be it informal, non-formal or formal.
Participants discussed the four-pillar approach when looking at education systems. Citizens need good schools, efficient vocational training, universities with relevance, and adequate adult education. There should be bridges between the four pillars, and second chances for those who did not have access or failed initially.
Within this context, participants discussed the aims and hopes of the Education for All policy framework as well as the Millennium Development Goals, and expressed concern at slow progress in achieving the goals and targets with low priority accorded education by governments in countries of both the Asian and European regions.
Adult education gains strength and recognition from support structures enjoyed by other parts of the education system. To be more successful, conducive polices, legislation, and financing mechanisms that respect the needs of the learners and providers should be put in place - as they are for the other education and training sectors.
The participants therefore welcomed the announcement by Mr. Zhang Xinsheng, Vice Minister of Chinese Education, that the Chinese government will formulate a Law on Life Long Learning to ensure the further development of adult learning in China.
The conference looked especially at globalisation and some of the most pressing and urgent issues which bear on the practice of adult education. The new information technologies have profoundly expanded the potential for learning and dramatically changed the world of work. Rapid and massive economic growth has expanded demand for labour and spurred the expansion of cities through wide-scale rural-urban and cross-country migration. It has exerted pressure on the environment with heightened risks to sustainability. Despite high economic growth, many remain excluded from its benefits: a quarter of the world’s population still live in extreme poverty, majority of them, women. Millions are still denied access to free and adequate health care services and health education thus fall prey to pneumonia, malaria, diarrhea, measles and AIDS. The participants underscored the important and critical role of adult education in enabling citizens to best respond to the challenges of globalization, social exclusion and conflict.
Participants appreciated the free flow of sharing information and experiences on their adult education activities. The participants analysed experiences in adults learners’ weeks, language learning and its testing, the training of adult educators and research policies. Discussions such as these are valuable to the development of adult education as a profession and an academic discipline.
The diversity of adult education cultures in the Asian and the European countries and between the Asian and European regions was recognized and approaches of intercultural learning discussed.
European and Asian participants appreciated to be informed on recent developments of adult education in China which deal with similar issues in an authentic way. It contributed to an understanding that we all have to learn from each other.
Calls and Recommendations
We, the participants of the International Conference and Study Tour on Adult Education for Learning Societies- Asian and European Perspectives for a Globalized World:
We commit to promote international solidarity and cooperation to strengthen adult education globally.
• We will continue to open opportunities for exchange between countries, national and regional organizations which build on and enhance our existing work. For example, further cooperation could centre around five key findings of a recent research study by the EAEA on trends and issues in European adult education: - the holistic, total, integrated, systemic and all-embracing grasp and policy perspective on adult learning and the resulting provision. - core public funding especially for the disadvantaged, with a stable and sustainable locally based infrastructure. - high quality of provision and quality of the personnel involved - recognition and credit for non-formal and informal alongside formal adult education and learning - simple key indicators, together with support for and use of good research and statistics.
• Information, exchange and cooperation in adult education for lifelong learning should as well include policies, laws, financial mechanisms, methodologies, materials, research, curricula, models, frameworks and best practices.
• Exchange of staff and students could be another valuable source to strengthen initial steps for middle and longer term perspectives.
• Structures, programmes and processes of the ASEM initiative could help the cooperation between Asian and European adult educators. The same applies for other intergovernmental processes and formations involving the European Commission and other bodies. These should be explored.
Further, being:
- Aware of the potential of adult education for social, cultural and economic development,
- Conscious that the right to learn of adult women and men is an enabling right for all the other fundamental human rights,
- Convinced of he necessity of international cooperation to ensure and monitor opportunities of women and men to learn throughout their adult life,
- Looking at CONFINTEAVI as a critical global platform to rally all actors for the urgent task of building active learning societies and of ensuring the creative participation of women and men in this construction of our common future,
- Committing already themselves, with their networks, to ensure the success of CONFINTEA VI,
· Invite UNESCO to intensify, through the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, the preparatory process of CONFINTEA VI to be held in 2009,
· Enjoin all Member States to participate in this preparatory process at national and through regional PRE-CONFINTEA meetings and send, in 2009 at CONFINTEA VI, high level delegations including and bringing together the various adult education stakeholders.
The undersigned social organisations and networks from Latin America and the Caribbean, gathered at the Controversy Tables: Democracy and Inequality, present this declaration to the Presidents and Heads of State present at the XVI Iberoamerican Summit.
1. We believe that it will not be possible to overcome poverty and inequalities in Latin America and the Caribbean without reaching social and gender justice, without redistribution of wealth and without eradicating discriminations on the basis of race, ethnicity, origin, class, geographical origin, sexual orientation, religious orientation, age, abilities, sex, HIV status, among others. The full exercise of rights must be guaranteed through models of sustainable development.
2. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed upon in the United Nations Millennium Declaration represent minimalist targets. In spite of this it is clear that they will not be achieved by 2015. We urge the Iberoamerican governments to attend to the structural problems of development and the needs of the most underprivileged population by implementing the agreements reached at the Social Summits of the United Nations.
3. Latin America and the Caribbean is a diverse region, with multiple cultures, languages, development projects and ethnic and racial groups. We call upon the governments of Ibero-America to support the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples at the LXI United Nations General Assembly.
4. The Latin American societies have affirmed the democratic project. Nevertheless, the continent is not immune to the threats of authoritarianisms and fundamentalisms. The challenge of development is directly linked to a new democratic institutionalism that combines representivity with participation within the framework of the full exercise of the indivisible Human Rights, at local, national, regional and global levels.
5. Parity has to do with representation and mandates and it impacts directly on the distribution of power in a democracy. Institutions change not only in relation to their “mission” but also because of their structural composition. Without women occupying positions of real power, no agenda that has the objectives of economic and social justice, human rights and democracy can be implemented. In this sense we recognise the efforts done in Chile and in Spain.
6. The majority of the countries in our region are failing to fulfil Article 12.1 of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women that says: “States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in the field of health care in order to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, access to health care services, including those related to family planning”. To prohibit or limit the access to contraceptives and to the services of legal and safe abortion is discriminatory and it undermines the rights to dignity, freedom, life, health and the integrity of women.
7. Migration is a fundamental right. It becomes a problem when people are forced to emigrate due to the lack of opportunities in their own countries. Restrictions to free migration favour the traffic of human beings, mainly women, and put their lives at risk. These situations are directly linked with the international financial architecture, the inequitable logic of the international trade, the weakness of the integration processes and the inability of the national governments to implement redistributive policies, of generating decent employment and of putting in place integral public policies.
8. Remittances from migrants have become the second source of capital inflow in developing countries, following direct foreign investment. Nevertheless, they cannot substitute state policies aimed at the eradication of poverty.
9. We urge the governments of Spain and Portugal to honour the tradition, links and international treaties that they have with our region and to lead a new logic in the treatment of migration, understood as a right and recognising the important contribution of migrants in the production of the wealth of nations.
Montevideo, 31 October 2006
GCAP Facilitation Team for Latin America and the Caribbean GCAP Feminist Task Force ICAE REPEM Social Watch Articulación Feminista Marcosur
Forum Solidaridad Perú INESC IBASE CIPAF Cotidiano Mujer
CEGDS Observatorio de Políticas Públicas de Derechos Humanos en el MERCOSUR Red Caribeña y Latinoamericana contra la trata de personas - RECAL UAFRO Mujeres de Negro Uruguay
DECA Equipo
Pueblo, A.C.- punto focal de Social Watch en México Comisión de la Mujer Arbolito Uruguay Unión
de Mujeres Uruguayas 3.- THE FOURTH PAN COMMONWEALTH FORUM ON OPEN LEARNING SPELLS CHALLENGES TO NEW AND CREATIVE WAYS OF LEARNING.
The Fourth Pan Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning (PCF4) opened in Ocho Rios, Jamaica on October 30, 2006 and lasted until November 3, 2006. The forum theme was achieving the Millennium Development Goals: Innovation, Learning, Collaboration and Foundation. Delegates came from over sixty five countries; fifty three being the Commonwealth attended the Forum. Most participants came from government institutions and the academia representing tertiary institutions of learning providing open and distance education.
Key notes speeches were delivered on each day of the forum by Sir John Daniel President and Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth of Learning; Mr. Winston Cox the ex-Secrteatry General of the Commonwealth responsible for Development Cooperation; Prof. Penina Mlama of the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE); and Dr. Sugata Mitra from NIIT India respectively.
Sir John noted the increasing importance of technology in open and distance learning (ODL) a fact that was reflected by the numerous workshops dedicated to Learning and Technology including Mobile Learning and E-Learning which are becoming important in reaching population on the margins. Prof. Mlama on her part called for concrete action in mainstreaming gender in ODL rather than treating it as an option in ODL. In view of the fact that ODL uses innovative teaching and learning methodologies she saw an opportunity in using ODL in infusing gender interventions where traditional education methods have failed.
The changing contexts of ODL was appreciated in the diverse sites in which ODL was approached as a theme: ODL in Governance; ODL and in Rural and Community Development; ODL in Literacy and Livelihood and ODL in Policy. Traditional approaches to ODL in terms of instructional design and teaching and teacher education were on offer as were more revolutionary approaches enabled by technology most notably Open Resources, Mobile Technology and Social Justice Work.
Civil Society presence was minimal, the forum being dominated by institutions and institutionalized approaches to learning a fact that challenged the notion of “open” learning. In this regard Firoze Manji of Fahamu notes that there is still a challenge in appreciating open learning beyond the formal education model.
Two Feminist organizations were at hand to offer practical examples of how open learning occurs in social justice work. Both presentations were made at the session on the Role of Civil Society in meeting the MDGs on Education and Gender parity. Sahiba Sisters Foundation from Tanzania presented challenges in Africa in achieving parity in girls education and noted how gains in education were being eroded as a result of the rise of conservative forces as well as the adverse effect of structural adjustment polices that lead to reductions to social services including education. Shanili Joshi from Nirantar, a Centre for Gender and Education demonstrated how basic literacy projects were used not only to build literacy skills but also improve women’s social status in the family and in the community.
Perhaps in focusing too much on what was happening in the academic world and in traditional structures and power relations, the conference missed much of the dynamism that was happening outside institutional spaces in so far as opening up learning opportunities for marginalized communities in different parts of the globe. Importantly it missed making the link between citizenship empowerment for social justice as opposed to solely providing learners with functional skills to fit existing paradigms. The absence of critical civil society organizations from such an important policy and networking forum is a challenge at cross-learning across institutions and actors which if unaddressed will defeat a collective endeavour of empowering world citizens across the Commonwealth and the World. It is a challenge that we need to take up during the upcoming ICAE Assembly. 4.- JOB OPPORTUNITY: SENIOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS POLICY ANALYST
ActionAid
International USA
ActionAid International USA (AAI USA) – an affiliate of ActionAid International (AAI)-- is seeking a Senior Women’s Rights Policy Analyst to establish and coordinate a new program focused on the intersection of Violence against Women and girls and HIV/AIDS.
Background and Context ActionAid International (AAI) works in partnership with poor and excluded people who are fighting for a world without poverty in which their voices have an impact on the policies of governments and major private institutions. After having functioned for over thirty years as a British NGO with field offices in forty countries, ActionAid transformed itself into an international organization in December 2003, and moved its headquarters from London to Johannesburg, South Africa. ActionAid works through partnerships with social movements that are fighting for the full realization of women’s rights, for the right to food and education, for the right to protection from emergencies and the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and for right to transparent and effective democratic governance structures.
ActionAid International USA (www.actionaidusa.org), the US affiliate of ActionAid International, was created in 2000. It is located in Washington, DC, with a staff projected to grow to 14 and a 2007 budget of approximately $4.5 million. AAI USA’s first 6 years have been spent advocating for reforms that speak directly to decision makers on key policies such as poverty reduction, trade, education, agriculture, and the expenditure of federal, IMF and World Bank funds. AAI USA links social change organizations and coalitions in the US with constituency-based groups and social movements in developing countries where AAI has affiliates. Our priority program areas are in food rights, economic governance, and our new program on violence against women in the context of HIV/AIDS.
The Position The new Women’s Rights Program Coordinator will work closely with members of ActionAid International’s existing Women’s Rights team, and will also liaise with our HIV/AIDS team, in order to create synergies in the policy research and analysis at all levels. S/he will report to the Executive Director and will have direct support from the Policy Associate. The Women’s Rights Program Coordinator will be primarily responsible for: 1) Producing research, analysis and collaborative advocacy on a variety of topics including: eliminating abstinence-until-marriage earmarks in federal funding for HIV/AIDS prevention; increasing appropriations for female-controlled prevention methods such as microbicides and the female condom; increasing research on the relationship between VAW and HIV/AIDS; and increasing funding for programs that address violence against women and its intersection with HIV/AIDS by bilateral donors, multilateral agencies, and private foundations. 2) Liaison between AAI USA and the AAI Women’s Rights and HIV/AIDS Thematic teams: to develop deeper channels of communication between Washington and other ActionAid programs and explore how such improved communications can increase the effectiveness of AAI USA’s research and advocacy by bringing the voices of ActionAid country program staff and partners from the Global South into the United States.
3) Networking and relationship-building: to facilitate networking, relationship-building and collaborative advocacy work with US-based NGOs and social movements working on women’s rights, VAW, and HIV/AIDS in the US and internationally.
Required Qualifications Include: - Masters degree in a related field - 4 or more years of professional experience - A demonstrated commitment to women’s rights - In-depth knowledge of international development and issues relating to women’s rights, violence against women, and HIV/AIDS - Demonstrated experience of women’s rights advocacy with multilateral agencies and donors; and familiarity with women’s rights advocacy sites and processes - Knowledge of and experience working with women’s rights and HIV/AIDS organizations in the United States and abroad. - Proven ability to work effectively in coalitions and partnerships with other organizations; - Imagination, enthusiasm and energy for advocacy work in support of social and economic justice; - Experience working in non-governmental development sector or other civil society organizations - Exceptional attention to detail and ability to manage multiple projects at once - willingness to travel - Strong commitment to the mission and vision of ActionAid International and a dedication to social justice issues
Salary and Benefits: Salary will be commensurate with experience. AAI USA offers a generous package of benefits. To Apply: Interested candidates should forward resume, cover letter, writing sample, and contact information for references to Ilana Solomon at ilana.solomon@actionaid.org. The position is open until filled. Only candidates selected for interviews will be contacted. Equal Opportunity Employer. ActionAid gives equal consideration to all applicants without regard to race, color, national origin, marital status, religion, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, or political affiliation.
Ilana
Solomon
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