UNESCO: Concrete Experiences for Transformational Change

Report Addendum: Concrete Experiences for Transformational Change, CID Focus Groups for the UNESCO Futures of Education Initiative, May 2021.

In January, UNESCO invited the Center for Intercultural Dialogue to participate in the Futures of Education Initiative by holding focus groups on how education needs to evolve today, in order to be more relevant tomorrow. Three sessions were convened, on January 28, 29, and 30, 2021. A report of our conclusions, framed as a response to the UNESCO document, Education in a Post-COVID World: Nine Ideas for Public Action, was submitted in February.

We proposed a tenth idea, that learning to live together requires intercultural dialogue, which was also published as CID Poster #14.

In April, UNESCO asked the Center to return to the forum group participants, this time requesting “innovative and inspiring concrete experiences to serve as good illustrations of activities and approaches that can contribute to transformational change.” Eight members of the original group were able to submit examples by the tight deadline in early May. Thanks to the participants who were able to respond so quickly:

Evangelos A. Afendras (Greece/Malaysia): Stumbling on adverse realities while building a “Humaniversity” for MDG ideals: Some autoethnographic notes
Giovanna Carloni (Italy), Virtual exchange as a transformative process in the Global South
Mohammed Guamguami (Morocco): COIL education: Glocal principled innovation
Nazan Haydari and Onur Sesigür (Turkey): Gender and sound culture workshop in Turkey
Maria Hussain (UK): Nurturing inclusive intercultural dialogue beyond borders through student-led podcasts: The case of Cultural Insight Wednesdays
Sr. Teresa Joseph (India): Don Bosco: Word in the Ear
Maura Di Mauro (Italy): Systemic university change towards internationalisation for academia (SUCTIA)
Yehuda Silverman (Canada/USA): Incorporating diversity into intrapersonal peace and conflict prevention

One of these examples has already been published as Constructing Intercultural Dialogues #12, and several others are in preparation as further publications on this site.