CONFINTEA VI - Blogging from Belem, Brazil
David Harvey, ProLiteracy President & CEO - From the International Civil Society Forum (ICSF) - Belem, Brazil - 11/28/09
Lynn Curtis, head of ProLiteracy´s international programs, and I, David Harvey, arrived this past Saturday after a 10 hour flight to Belem, Brazil, to participate in ICSF. Over 1000 NGOs from all over the world are participating in the Forum, ahead of UNESCO´s CONFINTEA conference. CONFINTEA only happens every 12 or 13 years, so this is a rare meeting indeed! The Forum is preparing NGOs to participate in CONFINTEA, and will prepare an action agenda to try and influence the outcome of CONFINTEA.
David Harvey, From ICSF Belem, Brazil - 11/29/09
One of the opening speakers of ICSF, Jose Roberto Guerara, from the Asia/Pacific Association for Basic Education, asked people to stand up if they had participated in past CONFINTEA conferences, with the first happening in the late 40s. A few people stood up. Mr. Guerara then asked, ¨"what has changed since the first CONFINTEA?" One of the people said, "not much." And about everyone in the room agreed! I was shocked....how could this be, I asked Lynn Curtis! While the answer was rhetorical, it spoke to the frustration of the NGO community that has seen too little progress since the 1940s. Speaker after speaker got up and talked about adult education being the first programs to be cut in bad economic times, that governments overall devote less then 1% of their education budgets to adult education, and that our community had failed an advocacy and PR battle to link adult education and literacy to alleviation of poverty and human suffering around the world. Not to be discouraged, speaker after speaker than spoke to how we must seize this rare opportunity to call for action in new ways! Stay tuned.
David Harvey - From ICSF Belem, Brazil - 11/30/2009
FISC is producing an action agenda to bring to CONFINTEA, titled From Rhetoric to Coherent Action. Lynn Curtis and I met with various caucuses from around the world (Asia, Europe, Women's.) There was no North American caucus because there are so few Americans and Canadians at FISC. We pushed 5 main points which we felt were missing from the agenda: (1) produce the document with the media in mind so that we get coverage. Avoid overly technical language; (2) add that adult literacy achievements results in prevention of social problems and poverty and health conditions like AIDS; (3) add that adult learners must be empowered to speak for themselves and be empowered to help shape government policy, programs, and evaluation; (4) request that donor countries contribute 20 billion Euros by 2020 to support adult literacy programs, not just make a recommendation about percentages of country budgets that must be devoted to adult literacy; and (5) that the role of NGOs must be recognized as central to delivery of educational services and that NGOs should be empowered by countries to help shape policy, programs, and evaluation methods.
Lynn Curtis, Personal Highlights from ICSF Belem, Brazil - 12/1/2009
Greetings from the Forum for International Civil Society and CONFINTEA VI in hot and humid Belem, Brazil at the mouth of the Amazon. Its been exciting to join ProLiteracy President & CEO, David Harvey in connecting with old and new friends of literacy from around the world. In this gathering more than 1,000 champions of literacy and adult education joined to set the stage for the historic CONFINTEA VI conference here in Belem. The numbers of participants are multiplied as NGOs join high level government delegations worldwide to shape a global adult education policy for the future. With passionate calls for justice and empowerment through literacy, provocative dialogue, and song, dance and celebration, NGO's have organized to help define new directions for adult education . Changes in policy are emerging through CONFINTEA's Framework for Action statement, and ProLiteracy is participating in caucus input for the document language.
[Photo] David Harvey, with Kazi Rafiqul Alam, PL partner program in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Dr. S.Y. Shah, Dr. Madan Singh of the Indian Adult Education Association on the left. Dr Singh spent two years at Syracuse University completing masters research on ProLiteracy's Laubach Way to Reading.
Lynn's personal highlights of the last few days: ProLiteracy partners, Kenya Adult Learner Association, Bangladesh Dhaka Ahsania Mission, and UNIVA of Nigeria have emerged as visibly active leaders in panels and presentations. European, Brazilian, Asian and US representatives engaged in ProLiteracy's Literacy for Social Change workshop. David and I participated actively in planning caucuses to give specific language input to the draft CONFINTEA document.
It's very exciting to be part of ProLiteracy's leadership role in this historic event.
Lynn Curtis, head of ProLiteracy´s international programs, and I, David Harvey, arrived this past Saturday after a 10 hour flight to Belem, Brazil, to participate in ICSF. Over 1000 NGOs from all over the world are participating in the Forum, ahead of UNESCO´s CONFINTEA conference. CONFINTEA only happens every 12 or 13 years, so this is a rare meeting indeed! The Forum is preparing NGOs to participate in CONFINTEA, and will prepare an action agenda to try and influence the outcome of CONFINTEA.
David Harvey, From ICSF Belem, Brazil - 11/29/09
One of the opening speakers of ICSF, Jose Roberto Guerara, from the Asia/Pacific Association for Basic Education, asked people to stand up if they had participated in past CONFINTEA conferences, with the first happening in the late 40s. A few people stood up. Mr. Guerara then asked, ¨"what has changed since the first CONFINTEA?" One of the people said, "not much." And about everyone in the room agreed! I was shocked....how could this be, I asked Lynn Curtis! While the answer was rhetorical, it spoke to the frustration of the NGO community that has seen too little progress since the 1940s. Speaker after speaker got up and talked about adult education being the first programs to be cut in bad economic times, that governments overall devote less then 1% of their education budgets to adult education, and that our community had failed an advocacy and PR battle to link adult education and literacy to alleviation of poverty and human suffering around the world. Not to be discouraged, speaker after speaker than spoke to how we must seize this rare opportunity to call for action in new ways! Stay tuned.
David Harvey - From ICSF Belem, Brazil - 11/30/2009
FISC is producing an action agenda to bring to CONFINTEA, titled From Rhetoric to Coherent Action. Lynn Curtis and I met with various caucuses from around the world (Asia, Europe, Women's.) There was no North American caucus because there are so few Americans and Canadians at FISC. We pushed 5 main points which we felt were missing from the agenda: (1) produce the document with the media in mind so that we get coverage. Avoid overly technical language; (2) add that adult literacy achievements results in prevention of social problems and poverty and health conditions like AIDS; (3) add that adult learners must be empowered to speak for themselves and be empowered to help shape government policy, programs, and evaluation; (4) request that donor countries contribute 20 billion Euros by 2020 to support adult literacy programs, not just make a recommendation about percentages of country budgets that must be devoted to adult literacy; and (5) that the role of NGOs must be recognized as central to delivery of educational services and that NGOs should be empowered by countries to help shape policy, programs, and evaluation methods.
Lynn Curtis, Personal Highlights from ICSF Belem, Brazil - 12/1/2009
Greetings from the Forum for International Civil Society and CONFINTEA VI in hot and humid Belem, Brazil at the mouth of the Amazon. Its been exciting to join ProLiteracy President & CEO, David Harvey in connecting with old and new friends of literacy from around the world. In this gathering more than 1,000 champions of literacy and adult education joined to set the stage for the historic CONFINTEA VI conference here in Belem. The numbers of participants are multiplied as NGOs join high level government delegations worldwide to shape a global adult education policy for the future. With passionate calls for justice and empowerment through literacy, provocative dialogue, and song, dance and celebration, NGO's have organized to help define new directions for adult education . Changes in policy are emerging through CONFINTEA's Framework for Action statement, and ProLiteracy is participating in caucus input for the document language.
[Photo] David Harvey, with Kazi Rafiqul Alam, PL partner program in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Dr. S.Y. Shah, Dr. Madan Singh of the Indian Adult Education Association on the left. Dr Singh spent two years at Syracuse University completing masters research on ProLiteracy's Laubach Way to Reading.
Lynn's personal highlights of the last few days: ProLiteracy partners, Kenya Adult Learner Association, Bangladesh Dhaka Ahsania Mission, and UNIVA of Nigeria have emerged as visibly active leaders in panels and presentations. European, Brazilian, Asian and US representatives engaged in ProLiteracy's Literacy for Social Change workshop. David and I participated actively in planning caucuses to give specific language input to the draft CONFINTEA document.
It's very exciting to be part of ProLiteracy's leadership role in this historic event.
Hello David and Lynn:
ReplyDeleteI am happy to see such proactive involvement in global advocacy and constituency building! It must be possible to link adult literacy to poverty reduction efforts, the MDGs, economic growth, no? See research from peer NGOs, the World Bank etc. on the impact of child education, especially girl children, on macro economic growth and GDP for instance. Good luck!
Tosca