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Background
A key objective of the Decade is to take a community-based approach to implementing ESD activities and programmes. ESD must integrate all levels of society – local, national, regional and global – because sustainable development cannot be pursued at only one level. But the impact of sustainable development – and of unsustainable development – is ultimately experienced most keenly at the local level, where livelihoods are enhanced or diminished and resources are regenerated or depleted. It is for this reason that ESD must be rooted in the local level – starting from and aiming to address grassroots realities.
The workshop will bring together representatives from organizations involved in community-based ESD initiatives to discuss, from a South Asia perspective, the power of community engagement in implementing ESD initiatives. The consultation
will also provide a forum for a sub-regional overview of community-based ESD initiatives and how to use the lessons learned from these experiences. The experiences of a rural community in Almora, India, in which UNESCO ran a project on community empowerment for sustainable development
will be used as a base for this discussion. Finally, participants
will be provided an opportunity to develop proposals for community engagement projects in South Asia to support the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development and the Asia-Pacific regional implementation strategy.
The workshop will look at model cases of approaches and methods to empower members of the rural communities facing poverty and environmental degradation so that they would be able to take initiatives to address environmental problems and improve the overall quality of life. Some of points of discussion during the workshop
will include:
- Community action plans to improve the quality of their environment and of their life in general
- Synthesis and analysis of project experiences
- Deeper understanding about the importance of environmental sustainability and the link between environmental issues and other social issues such as gender quality and poverty.
- Capacity of the community members to monitor and assess the state of their local environment.
- Commitment among community members to improve their local environment and the quality of their life in general;
- Capacity of community members to discuss and envision their adequate information; and
- Contribution towards the discourses among educators, activists and academics on community education for sustainable development.
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