Conference involves schools in environmental programmes
Jordan Times
May 26, 2007
AMMAN (JT) — The UNESCO Amman office, in collaboration with the Swedish-based NGO Life-Link Friendship-Schools (www.life-link.org), brought together school teachers from different countries in the region in a two-day workshop this week.
The workshop, designed to raise awareness on the environmental and culture
of peace programmes among educators from the Middle East, was held under the
patronage of Minister of Education and Minister of Higher Education and
Scientific Research Khalid Touqan.
School teachers and coordinators from Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and
Palestine were provided with the necessary knowledge, skills and commitment to become
involved in the Life-Link Programme global campaign “Youth Caring and
Sharing Actions Worldwide 2000+.”
The objective of such a campaign is to promote and initiate concrete caring
and sharing actions in and among schools worldwide in areas such as the
environment, human rights, conflict resolution and constructive
collaboration, as a way to achieve a world of security, according to a UNESCO statement.
As a complementary step participants at the workshop also studied ways to
integrate the Life-Link Programme in the UNESCO Associated Schools Project
network (ASPnet) (www.unesco.org/education/asp), a global platform of some
7,900 educational institutions in 176 countries, ranging from preschools and
primary to secondary schools and teacher training institutions, who work in
support of quality education in practice.
A total of 454 schools in the Arab states region are already part of this
network, out of which some 120 private and public schools are Jordanian.
Synergies between the Life-Link Friendship School Programme and UNESCO’s
ASPnet Programme represent a new step in helping countries achieve the goals of the
International Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, as well as
the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children
of the World (2001-2010).
Both decades were proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 2002 and 1998,
respectively, and UNESCO was designated as the lead agency to actively
promote them.