Global Schools Hosts ECOSOC Youth Forum Side Event on Partnerships and Collaboration in Education

On Tuesday 25th April, in alignment with pillar one of the report on the 2022 United Nations (UN) Transforming Education Summit (TES), the Global Schools Program (GSP) held a virtual side event at the 2023 Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Youth Forum. The event was titled: Education for Sustainable Development (ESD): An Innovative Way to Model Partnerships and Collaboration in Schools to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The objective of this side event was to bring together youth, students, educators, school leaders, and organizations to showcase examples of partnerships and collaborations amongst schools as well as with their local communities. The session was moderated by Santha Nair, GSP Project Officer for Partnerships and Events.

During her presentation, Amanda Abrom, Program Manager at GSP, highlighted that over the past two years, the Global Schools Advocates have engaged educators, advocates, teachers, community members, and parents in over 100 countries and territories around the world, reaching over 270k people directly. She added that through the Advocates Program, GSP has had the opportunity to see very innovative partnership models within schools, their departments, and their local communities through service learning, as well as within the GSP network. Furthermore, Amanda announced that the third day of the ECOSOC youth forum will be based on the participants’ suggestions and interventions that will shape the review of the SDGs, as this year is the midpoint of the SDG agenda.

During her presentation, Melissa explained that Edvolution works primarily on SDG 4, quality education, with the hope of improving teaching quality among teachers, school leaders, and system leaders at the state and district level. Melissa applauded the attendees commitment to the goals outlined by the UN SDGs.

After the keynote speaker, three GSP Advocates shared their stories and experiences with crafting creative partnerships during the pandemic, and what they have learned about sustaining these collaborations post COVID-19.

Neetu Lunthra is Global Schools Advocate from India. She explained that strong partnerships, to her, means being grounded in common values and goals, mutual respect, trust, and experienced sensibilities. Strong partnerships are about what each partner brings to the table, and it all depends upon hard work.

The second speaker, Federica Quartesan, is a Global Schools Advocate and high school science teacher at Centro Studi Casnati, and the Project Chief at Casnati for ESD. The Casnati for ESD project is configured as a new bilingual (Italian/English) school website that collects school-wide activities and builds storytelling to inform, educate, and inspire anyone who wants to connect with the activities of Federica’s school, either online or on the affiliated social media channels. 

To Federica, strong partnerships mean collaboration on multiple levels of vertical and horizontal cooperation that connects the highest number of variables in a complex system and in a holistic way. During her presentation, Federica highlighted that in this world, there is a need for more holistic models in education. She said the building of holistic models in the educational field is inevitable so that we can address many different social, economic, and environmental challenges that impact humanity.

Federica said, “My school [developed] a strategy for ESD integration that could make us teachers coordinate our efforts…[and allow] our students to become protagonists of the learning process, taking proper action.”

Mohamed Helmy was the last speaker among the three Advocates. He is an extra-curricular and events director at his school in Egypt, who successfully planted 1000 trees with his students.

Mohamed believes that strong partnerships should start within the school community, consisting of the school administration, students, and parents. These stakeholders are already creating projects that can convince other partners to start supporting the school.

After the three advocates’ presentations, Samuel Isaiah from Malaysia, head of Education Initiatives at YTL Power International, engaged in a fireside chat with moderator, Santha.

With a background in the teaching profession, Samuel shared his experience in partnering with the students, the school community, and different schools as a teacher. He explained that the experience felt genuine in the partnerships when everyone was doing things with a common interest.

At the end of the presentations, GSP Project Officer for Partnerships and Events, Hafiz Jawad Sohail, shared how individuals and organizations who participated in the GSP ECOSOC side event could partner with GSP.

To conclude the event presentations, the moderator, Santha Nair, officially announced the opening for applications for the next cohort of Global Schools Advocates, which started accepting applications on 25th April, 2023 and will close on May 25th, 2023.

To apply for the next cohort of the Advocates program, please click here.

To read a full summary of the event, go to the Global Schools Website.