The Role of the B.C./North Cascades UN-RCE on ESD: What do you think?

Walking the Talk was officially chartered the B.C./North Cascades UN Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development January 10, 2010. Beginning with our Community Dialogue on Education on May 19th at the Wosk Centre, we are in the process of envisioning how the new RCE can walk the talk in education in our region. We want to hear your ideas!

Here is a brief overview of the main principles and goals the United Nations has set out for RCEs.

RCE Overview: An RCE is a network of existing formal, non-formal and informal education organizations mobilised to deliver ESD to local and regional communities. A network of RCEs worldwide has been created to constitute the Global Learning Space for Sustainable Development. RCEs aspire to achieve the goals of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD, 2005-2014) by translating its global objectives into the context of the local communities in which they operate.

Key Objective of UN Decade on Education for Sustainable Development: 

To empower people of all ages to assume responsibility for creating a sustainable future.

The Core Functions of an RCE:
RCEs bring together institutions at the regional/local level to jointly promote ESD. They build innovative platforms to share information and experiences and to promote dialogue among regional/local stakeholders through partnerships for sustainable development. They create a local/regional knowledge base to support ESD actors, and promote four major goals of ESD in a resource-effective manner. These four goals are to:

- Lead advocacy and public awareness raising efforts about the importance of educators and the essential role of ESD in achieving a sustainable future. RCEs promote the long-term goals of ESD, such as environmental stewardship, social justice, and improvement of the quality of lif

- Increase access to quality education that is most needed in the regional contex

- Re-orient education towards SD, covering existing programmes/subjects from the point of ESD and designing an integrated SD curricula. ESD programmes are tailored to address issues and local context of the community RCE’s operate in

- Deliver trainers’ training programs and to develop methodologies and learning materials for them

The Four Core Elements of an RCE are:

- Governance – addressing issues of RCE management and leadershi

- Collaboration – addressing the engagement of actors from all levels of formal, non-formal and informal education in RCE activities

- Research and development – addressing the role of research and its inclusion in RCE activities, as well as contributing to the design of strategies for collaborative activities, including those with other RCEs

- Transformative education – contributing to the transformation of the current education and training systems to satisfy ambitions of the region regarding sustainable living and livelihood

RCE Organizational Development – Proposed First Steps

1. Determine governance structure and written terms of reference for the RCE. Who will be major initiators and promoters of the RCE in the region? How will it be funded and operated?

2. Conduct regional survey and begin dialogue with local stakeholders to identify:

- local problems,

- local priorities

- existing capacity in relation to the objectives of DESD

- interested parties and strategies to bring them together to build a vision for RCE.

3. Develop an Action Plan for the RCE based on the regional survey, past research and dialogues, and the UN’s four main goals for DES

- public awareness and understanding

- access to quality basic education

- reorienting existing education

- training programmes for all sector

We want to hear from you!

How can we help you with your work in the community? What research needs to be undertaken to move things forward? What should our key priorities over the next five years be? Together, how can we walk the talk in education in our region?

If you can't make the dialogue on May 19th, but have some ideas or thoughts about these questions and the role of the RCE in the B.C./North Cascades region, please email them to us at walkingthetalk@gmail.com and we'll consider them in our dialogue and visioning process.