 Hello, everyone. Welcome. I'm Gabriela Marino from the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in the Vatican. And we're going to open the symposium officially very shortly. So I'm here with some housekeeping information. What started off seven years ago at the request of Pope Francis as a small gathering of young activists involved in the fight against human trafficking around the world has turned into one of our most favorite events of the year. And this has led to so many new projects and lasting friendships. So let's hope we can meet in person and next year's edition. And meanwhile, I'd like to remind you of the following. So we do have Spanish, English, Spanish simultaneous interpretation. Look for the globe on your screen. Tenemos traducción simultánea inglés español. Si buscan el globo en la pantalla, ahí bien en las opciones. Please use a headset with a microphone, if possible, if you are a speaker, because it makes it easier for the interpreters to hear you. The event is live on YouTube on sdsense channel. So make sure you share it with your friends and colleagues. Please keep your microphones off, unless a moderator unmutes you. Keep your cameras on, if possible because we would love to see you. Do you zoom reactions, heart thumbs up or down? And it's always makes it more cheerful. Pose your questions via the chat box to specific panelists. When posing questions, please state your city and country. Feel free to post any ideas, comments, not just questions, because this is how new ideas can be fostered here at the Vatican. You've supposed to. And use the hashtag vys2020 and mission 4.7 and tweet or post it speakers and their respective organizations. And that's it from me. I'd like to hand over to Sam Loney now, the founder of SDSN Youth and a longtime friend already. We're always so happy to work with you, Sam. So thank you for joining us this year again. Okay, if you have any questions, feel free to message me directly. Thank you very much, Gabriella. I hope you can hear me okay. Okay, great. I said my name is Sam Loney, and I'm a program director with the SDSN. I'm also the founder and director of global schools at the SDSN. I've had the privilege of chairing this symposium for the past five years, of course, with the Patronship of Amons and your Sanchez and Professor Sacks to wonderful mentors and patrons. Seven years ago, Pope Francis inspired this symposium through his commitment and his call for loyalty to human rights and sustainable development and dignity. It has since become an intergenerational space dedicated to important conversations between leaders and organizations of different movements around the world for sustainable development. Over the years, some incredible initiatives have emerged from this symposium. And I think there are too many to name here. But certainly for more, please look at the website. And of course, as always, thank you to our wonderful partners at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences for your partnership, leadership and support over the past few years, in particular, Gabrielle and Monsignor. Usually, we would have this meeting in the we would have this meeting in the Pontifical Academy, in the beautiful halls of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, but not today because of the global circumstances. But we hope nevertheless it will be an exciting meeting. In any case, we have a very exciting program ahead with lots of wonderful speakers with two important events. On day one, we will have the launch of mission 4.7, which will be happening shortly. And on second day, we will be talking about human rights and of course, the launch of the youth solutions report in session six. So today is dedicated to launching of mission 4.7. And let me just say, two years ago when Professor Sachs and I were discussing this idea, I would have never imagined this grand launch and the wonderful partnerships that have emerged to make this happen. And it's all thanks to the leadership of Professor Sachs in pushing this initiative forward. And it is all based on this critical and important principle that we have a moral duty to educate and prepare children for a world that's going to be more complex, challenging and unpredictable and enable them to shape sustainable, prosperous and resilient communities for the future. We at Global Schools are a proud partner and we're very excited to work with everyone else. And with that, I hand over to Monsignor Sanchez to begin the session and introduce the video from Pope Francis. Monsignor. Hello, hello. I am very happy to see all of you here in this very important gathering in the context of Christmas, that is, for us, the birth of Christ is the birth of love and the birth of peace. And we need to renew our love to ourselves in the good and to the others. And really, we need to go against to hate, against to war, against to violence, against to the things that are not truth, that are not just. And especially this in education, because education is the more important mission that we can have. I say, sorry, but we can quote it, Aristotle, the politics say, the more important function that have the people is to have education to the new generations. And this education begin with ourselves, begin if we put in the center the love and the peace and the love and the peace for ourselves in the good, but also for the other people. So in the context of Christmas, we need that we need to renew this with the consciousness, with the absolutely conviction that this love come from God, and God is just love. And love are our people. We can believe one thing, other thing, but in the end, the essence of this is love. For this week that I imagine of God, we need to renew this love, especially in this moment, and especially in the context of education. Thank you very much. I think that we have the message of the people. Las crisis biológica, psíquica, económica han empeorado mucho por las crisis políticas y sociales que tienen aparejadas. Ustedes se han reunido hoy en un acto de esperanza, un acto de esperanza para que los impulsos de odio, divisiones e ignorancia puedan y sean superados a través de una nueva buena onda, digamos así, una nueva buena onda de oportunidades educativas basadas en la justicia social y el amor mutuo. Un nuevo pacto global para la educación, lanzado ya en octubre, con algunos de los presentes. Antes todo les agradezco por reunirse hoy para hacer crecer nuestras esperanzas y planes compartidos en una nueva educación que fomente la trascendencia de la persona humana, el desarrollo humano integral y sostenible, el diálogo intercultural y religioso, la salvaguarda del planeta, los encuentro por la paz y la apertura a Dios. Las Naciones Unidas ofrecen una oportunidad única para que los gobiernos y la sociedad civil del mundo se unan tanto en la esperanza como en la acción por una nueva educación. Cito con gusto el mensaje de reconocimiento de San Pablo VI a las Naciones Unidas. Dice así, vosotros habéis cumplido señores y estás cumpliendo una gran obra, enseñar a los hombres la paz. Las Naciones Unidas son la gran escuela donde se recibe esta educación. La Constitución de la UNESCO adoptada en 1945 al final de la tragedia de la Segunda Guerra Mundial reconoció que, puesto que las guerras nacen en la mente de los hombres, es en la mente de los hombres donde deben erigirse los balbates de la paz. Hace 75 años que los fundadores de la UNESCO pidieron asegurar a todos el pleno igual acceso a la educación, la posibilidad de investigar libremente la verdad objetiva y el libre intercambio de ideas y conocimiento a fin de que los pueblos se comprendan mejor entre sí y adquieran un conocimiento más preciso y verdadero de sus respectivas vidas. En nuestro tiempo, en que el pacto educativo mundial se ha quebrado, veo con satisfacción que los gobiernos se han comprometido nuevamente a poner en práctica estas ideas mediante la adopción de la agenda 2030 y de los objetivos de desarrollo sostenible de las Naciones Unidas, en sinergia con el pacto global sobre la educación. En el corazón de los objetivos de desarrollo sostenible está el reconocimiento de que la educación de calidad para todos es una base necesaria para proteger nuestro hogar común y fomentar la fraternidad humana. Tal como el pacto global para la educación así también fundamentalmente el ODS-4 compromete a todos los gobiernos a garantizar una educación inclusiva, equitativa y de calidad como a sí mismo promover oportunidades de aprendizaje durante toda la vida y esto para todos. El pacto global para la educación y la misión 47 trabajarán juntos por la civilización del amor, la belleza y la unidad. Permítame decirles que espero que ustedes sean poetas de una nueva belleza humana, una nueva belleza fraterna y amigable como de la salvaguardia de la tierra que pisamos. No se olviden de los ancianos y de los abuelos, portadores de los valores humanos más decisivos. Gracias por lo que hacen y por favor no se olviden de rezar por mí. Gracias. Thank you very much. Thank you Monsenior and we thank you tolerance Pope Francis as the founder of this incredible symposium and supporter of Mission 4.7 and also for his inspiring message of support. And with that we would like to kick off the session officially and I am going to introduce the host of the session, Professor Jeff Sachs, who really needs no introduction, but just a quick overview. Professor Sachs is the director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed the Earth Institute from 2000 into 2016. He's also the president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and he has served as an advisor to three United Nations Secretaries General and currently serves as an SDG advocate under the current Secretary General, Antonio Guterres. Professor Sachs was named twice as Time Magazine's hundred most influential world leaders and has been ranked by the economists amongst the top three most influential living economists. He's the culture of Mission 4.7 and with that I give him the floor. Thank you very much and welcome to all of the youth and all gratitude and merry Christmas to one senior Marsala Sanchez-Sarondo, our host and to Gabriella Moreno, our dear, dear friend who helps us each year for this wonderful occasion. And what a thrill to have the start with Pope Francis' words and his wisdom and his inspiration. He is guiding us more than any other person on the planet to the kind of justice and future that we want. We should recall that Pope Francis gave the speech to the world leaders on the occasion of adopting the Sustainable Development Goals on the morning of September 25th, 2015 in that wonderful occasion when he told the world leaders that our interdependence obliges us to think of one plan for our common home. And here we are today, oops, are we okay? And here we are today to help move forward on that common plan for our common home. Pope Francis has issued two encyclicals that in a wondrous way help to guide our mission 4.7. Indeed, they are almost the manuscript of the mission 4.7. Laudato Si, of course, issued in 2015 is a magnificent call to stewardship of the planet and protection of the creation and especially the need to take actions to stop the devastation of human-made climate change. And now governments around the world are finally stepping forward late, but we hope not too late to make commitments to decarbonize energy systems and to stop the human-made climate change. This past year Pope Francis issued another wondrous encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, which calls on us to extend our fraternity to the whole world to have new encounters across cultures, across peoples, to find new methods of dialogue and of education so that we can understand each other and therefore also understand ourselves to be able to help to create the kind of peaceful world that Marcelo spoke about just moments ago. So with Laudato Si and Fratelli Tutti, we have the calls for awareness and leadership in sustainable development and in the global appreciation of culture and global citizenship. And how wonderful that that guidance is so utterly compatible with our purpose of launching mission 4.7. The Sustainable Development Goal 4 calls for quality education for all, from pre-K through lifelong learning. It is more vital than ever, especially in this period of mass disruption of education. But one of the pillars of SGG 4.7, thanks so much to the great leadership of Ban Ki-moon who we'll hear from in just a moment, is the target 4.7. It says that by 2030 all learners should acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including among others education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and nonviolence, global citizenship, and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture's contributions to sustainable development. So here we have the call for universal education for sustainable development, that's Laudato Si, and universal education for fraternity and for encounter and for dialogue. And that is the commitment for global citizenship and the appreciation of cultural diversity. So it is utterly fitting that we launch mission 4.7, a global effort to ensure the fulfillment of this wonderful target, this wonderful goal of universal education for sustainable development and global citizenship, in partnership and inspired by Pope Francis and by Pope Francis' global compact on education, which calls for the renewal of education in the spirit of global understanding and global peace. I want to thank UNESCO and its wonderful leadership, we'll hear from the Director General in just a moment, to Ban Ki-moon and the Ban Ki-moon Foundation, Ban Ki-moon Center for the former Secretary General's inimitable diplomacy and leadership to establish the sustainable development goals in the first place, and to have the insight to include target 4.7 on education for sustainable development and for global citizenship. With these partners, with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network and its crucial base of the SDG Academy at Sunway University in Kuala Lumpur and with Columbia University, I am absolutely thrilled and delighted to launch mission 4.7 on the occasion of the Seventh Vatican Youth Summit. And to do so, we have two patrons of this initiative, the two global patrons of the initiative, the Director General of UNESCO, UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the part of the UN system responsible for education, science and cultural appreciation, this crucial institution. The Director General, Audrey Ausley, will join us by video and then we will hear words of Ban Ki-moon, former Secretary General and the other patron of mission 4.7. Sam, if you could run the video, we'll hear from the Director General of UNESCO. Yep, video will run in a moment. Your Holiness, Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for joining us to launch this most urgent mission 4.7. Target 4.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals focuses on education for sustainable development and global citizenship. We're gathering today as a year of unforeseen upheaval comes to a close. As we pose for a reflection, let us use this time as a potential circuit breaker for action. The COVID-19 pandemic started as the world came out of the hottest decade in history. We now sit on the precipice of climate catastrophe with irrevocable damage already impacting biospheres and causing unprecedented biodiversity loss. Like war, the climate crisis is the result of human behavior. 2020 has shed light on other existential threats to our societies. Racism, gender inequality, the spread of conspiracy theories and hate speech, distrust of science, the rise of antisemitism and violent extremism. When we speak of rebuilding after the COVID-19 pandemic, we must start by what, where and how we learn so that it can reflect the society that we want. Target 4.7 was included in the Sustainable Development Goals to acknowledge that education must not only be universally accessible but also meaningful and empowering. UNESCO prioritizes Target 4.7 as a reminder that education is not only a goal in itself, it is also a means to achieve all the other SDGs, an enabler of change. Target 4.7 speaks to UNESCO's core mandate and mission to build lasting peace and foster open, equal and inclusive societies through education, sciences, culture and communication. In our globalized and interconnected world, this mandate is carried out today through our programs in education for sustainable development and global citizenship education, which promote holistic and transformational learning. This means not only developing new learning content that is relevant to the SDGs, but also focusing on learning outcomes, teaching and the learning environment itself to give learners the knowledge, skills, attributes and values they need to be change makers ready for the challenge of tomorrow. UNESCO has just launched a new global framework called ESD for 2030. At the World Conference for ESD Development taking place in May 2021, our member states will present their initiatives to bring nature and sustainable development into the classroom. Through global citizenship education, we are working towards more inclusive educational systems that foster respect for others, diversity and human rights. We are training young people who are aware of their responsibilities, capable of driving peace and change and committed to more sustainable societies. Media and information literacy is also a key point that mission 4.7 should address. Today, more than ever, this is needed to fight the disinformation that is threatening the stability and openness of our societies. UNESCO has worked in this field for the past 30 years and has adapted its approach to take into account the new challenges of the distribution of information through artificial intelligence or algorithm, for instance. The pandemic, which caused school closures that impacted 90% of learners, has jeopardized hard-worn achievements in the SDGs. In response, as you know, UNESCO has led the Global Coalition for Education, which came together to fight to protect access to education. But the pandemic is also an opportunity to rethink the futures of education, building on the lessons learned from the crisis. With this vision in mind, it is my honor to be a patron of Mission 4.7 and launch this initiative, which will support and enrich UNESCO's work on this vital target. Alongside the honorable Ban Ki-moon and Professor Jeffrey Sachs, we bring together great minds, esteemed members of the global education community, with strong ambitions and an incredible capacity for innovation. But this initiative also needs commitments of funding and action from governmental and non-governmental partners. For the mission we are launching today, together, could not be more urgent or important for the world we need to build tomorrow. We need to uphold global peace, a goal that is as important today as it was 75 years ago. I thank you for your attention. Back to you, Professor Sachs. I want a great message from Director General Audrey Auselay, who asks us to reimagine education and to mobilize our efforts and our finances for education for all. And we have a first rendezvous date in May at the Education Summit that UNESCO will host when countries will be committing to this very agenda. We have a lot of work to do, but fortunately thanks to Sam and his team and others a lot is underway. And I ask for all of the youth today and tomorrow in the symposium to be thinking of ways to accelerate our work on bringing education for sustainable development and global citizenship into the classrooms. This is the real purpose of Mission 4.7. Now it is my great honor and delight to introduce the Secretary General, former Secretary General of the UN, who is on the line. Is that correct, Sam? Yes. I don't see the full screen, so I'm thrilled. Yes, my former boss, and I consider him always my boss, Secretary General of the United Nations, who made possible all of this in two unbelievably stunning achievements in 2015, back to back, the adoption of Agenda 2030 and the SDGs and then followed a few weeks later with the Paris Climate Agreement, certainly one of the most momentous and successful moments in global diplomacy. I got to watch the world's consummate diplomat at work and don't understand exactly the magic of it, but it happened. And I know that through his leadership and his guidance, Mission 4.7 will happen also. Thank you, Secretary General. You've been a steadfast leader at every moment for global citizenship. You've embodied it, you've explained it, you've illustrated it, and now you will be patron with the ongoing play of this effort. So let me turn the microphone to you. Thank you, Professor Jeffrey Sucks, for your very kind introduction. I'm very flattered by what you told me, but you never told me like this way when I was in the office. Now, I'm very much grateful for your very kind words. In fact, he's been saying something in a different aspect. He has been my professor, he has been my teacher, and whatever he said, I really tried to put in action. So please remember that the ideas and all goals on SDGs have come from his ideas. Of course, you know, we discussed this matter with so many member states, scholars, and I'm very much grateful for his continuing commitment establishing this SDSN. In fact, I'm now working as honorary chair of this SDSN Korea Network. Now, I used to be the head. Now, I'm honorary head in the Korea Network, not in the UN organization. Again, thank you very much. He's my boss now at this time. Again, I'm very much grateful to his holiness of Pope Francis for his inspiring message. He has been really the leader, a spiritual leader, a really actual leader. I still remember fondly the excitement he has created and vision he has delivered at the United Nations on the very day of adopting this SDSN Development Goals. That was September 25th. The member states had convened a special session only in honor of his holiness of Pope Francis. He addressed more than hundreds of fifty heads of state and government and ministers and all delegations and there was electrifying moment when he delivered and he blessed. He had given blessings to all the leaders of the world that blessing this sustainable development goals. We have seen many such experiences when after a beautiful concert there is a standing ovation, but I have never seen such a long lasting standing ovations without any end. So, this is what I've been telling and I'm deeply deeply grateful for his continuing leadership and his letter to see really has made climate change agreement possible. Again, I'm deeply grateful for his participation today and his continuing leadership and also I'd like to thank his excellency Monsignor Marcelo Sorondo, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Co-Chair of the Mission 4.7. Whatever we have been doing with he has been Monsignor Sorondo has been behind behind the scene and I'm sure that Pope has participated because of his urging. Thank you very much for your leadership again. Of course, I am very happy to listen to the message, very important messages by my co-patron of Mission 4.7, her excellency Madame Audit Azuli, Director General of the UNESCO whom I met last year when I was able to travel in UNESCO headquarters and we discussed about how to implement 4.7, how to really foster global citizenship among young people and now we have all every important person. Now, I'd like to also thank and recognize the co-chairs, Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director General of Education UNESCO and also Jeffrey Chair, Chair of the Sunway Group and Dear Sam Loney, Director of Global Schools, DSTSN and many excellencies and honorable participants and dear global citizens. While beginning I'd like to quote what his Holiness Pope said, I quote, we may prove capable of responding with a new vision of fraternity between all men and women and social friendship that will not remain at the level of words. Let us dream then as a single human family, as fellow travelers sharing the same flesh as the children of the same earth, which is our common home. Each of us bringing the richness of his or her beliefs and convictions, each of us with his or her own voice, brothers and sisters all. I end of quote. This is what his Holiness Pope Francis wrote Fratelli Tucci from the Christian convictions that inspire and sustain him and he has a thought to make this reflection an invitation to dialogue among all people of goodwill. The global compact on education is also testament to his commitment to educate humanity about these principles. I thank him for his leadership and it is my great pleasure to join you today at the Vatican Youth Symposium on intergenerational gathering for sustainable development, bringing together leaders in global development to catalyze solutions and partnerships for the sustainable development goals. Today, I'm proud to launch the mission 4.7 along with my co-patron director general of UNESCO, Madame Audrey Agilem. It is a vital initiative to advocate for and work to ensure that all leaders acquire the values, knowledge and skills needed to promote global citizenship and sustainable development globally. When the SDG was established in September 2015, it was clear that to achieve this ambitious agenda, ensuring access to quality education would be essential. I have become a missionary of SDG. I'm always wearing this SDG badge everywhere, every time, every time. Under SDG form, quality education, target 4.7 calls for the implementation of education that is inclusive and that promotes sustainable development. It underlines the need to force the global citizenship and empower all learners to be active in our efforts to achieve the SDGs. Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, we only have 10 years left to achieve the SDGs. This means that we must act swiftly and collaboratively. COVID-19 has challenged international cooperation, swaying the national capacities and exacerbated inequalities. With regard to education, even prior to the pandemic, inclusive and equitable quality education was advancing at too slow a pace. Overall, five years after this adoption, now the progress level is uneven, depending upon where people are living. And we must make sure that within 10 years, we have to really make sure that all these SDG 17 goals are implemented. Now, with 90% of all the students out of school, because of the school closures caused by COVID-19, we risk taking steps backwards. It is a critical time to share a call to action and to launch this initiative, Mission 4.7, aimed to advocate for inspire and mobilize governmental and non-governmental actors to prioritize education for sustainable development. Mission 4.7 will facilitate and support exchange of good practices and mutual learning, as well as mobilized resources, and promote the engagement of champions for education, establishing innovative partnerships with diverse actors at the global and national level. We must raise the next generations to be global citizens, to act with passion and compassion when addressing the world's challenges. Both in my capacity as the former Secretary General of the United Nations and now as co-chair of the Ban Ki-moon Center for Global Citizens, I am honored to accept the role of patron to this mission. The Ban Ki-moon Center stands ready to build Mission 4.7 with the co-organizing partner UNESCO, the SDSN, and the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. In Seoul, Korea, I have also established to reinforce my capacity in Ban Ki-moon Center in Vienna, in Seoul, Ban Ki-moon Foundation for a Better Future. You see the logo behind me, and I'm using all organizations to promote these SDGs. Ladies and gentlemen, together, we must seize this moment to push this imperative initiative forward. Let us work together to educate humanity about sustainable development and global citizenship. With the necessary knowledge, skills, and empathy for others, we can create a brighter future for us all, leaving no one behind. And I thank for your commitment, and let's work together to make this world a better form. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Secretary General, thank you so much for the wonderful statement for your leadership and with all gratitude for your patronage of this initiative, which will be absolutely phenomenal and essential. We are organized in this project with several different groups that are all critical for the success of our effort, including four co-chairs representing the four organizations together for this purpose. It supports the Holy See and Pope Francis and represented by Marcelo Sanchez-Surondo, Sunway Foundation, and Sunway University, led by the chairman of Sunway Foundation, and of the chancellor and founder of Sunway University, Jeffrey Chia, and the assistant director general of UNESCO, Stefania Giannini. And we have many other wonderful leaders as part of the high-level advisory group, Jennifer Gross of the Blue Chip Foundation, Betsy Parker, the longtime founder and patron of this seminar, this symposium series, the Vatican Youth Symposium, who's been with this symposium from the start and a great friend and supporter, and many other leaders in education that you'll be hearing from shortly as part of our program. But for the next three speakers, I'd like to call on the co-chairs of mission 4.7, starting with Monsignor Marcelo Sanchez-Surondo. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you. I am very happy to collaborate with you in this great mission, especially after the very important speech of the Pope that recognized that the need that we come back to restart with education, global education, universal education, because he said that the pack of education is broken. So I think that we need to put all our more important force, energies, moral and economic to renew this mission of education that I'll say in the beginning is a more important mission that we can have, because it's the transmission of our values to the other generations. And of course, it is not only for us private, but also as governs, are also all the institutions, especially universities, especially colleges, especially other universities, but not specifically only the institution of education, but all people need to be an educator of the other people. And this is our mission. So I completely agree. And of course, the Academy and follow the Pope, the Academy of the Pope, follow this initiative with great interest. As you know, the Pope sent and launched this new pack in education, because he considered that the pack is broken. We need to re-come back to this in this moment, especially in this moment, when we don't have clear and the laugh in the heads of the people in the country, we have many sensational words, many sensational hate, many sensational completely different at the need that we need. And I am happy that also in your country, there are news important, and we can probably come with the collaboration of this great important nation and all the America and of course, the European country, but also Asia. I am very happy that Ban Ki-moon that I know because he came here and met the Pope here in the Academy. I remember and was this meeting the possibility to speak about education and to speak also to eradicate the new form of slaves. I remember perfectly and was fantastic moment for this meeting. So, of course, con with our collaboration. Marcelo, thank you so much. You are our great great guide and inspiration and a teacher of the deepest values. So I'm personally so grateful to you and we all are grateful to you for your unique, your really unique leadership. Let me turn to now the leader for education for the UN system and a great educator herself, a linguist, former minister of education of Italy and now assistant director general for education of UNESCO and one of the great proponents and leaders of this effort. Dr. Stefania Giannini. Thank you very much. Hi, thank you very much, Jeff, dear co-chair. It's a great pleasure to be to be with all of you today with Monsignor Marcelo, the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and just keeping in my mind an inspiring workshop. We had a few days before something enormous happened in this world and it was a bit paving the way February this year to this conversation and the initiative we are launching today and to be very happy to be with youth from around the world. We are discussing about change, I suppose. Change begins with a vision and takes form through a mission and this 4.7, in my opinion, is the more revolutionary principle embedded in the 2030 agenda. So let me pay tribute here to the Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, for his vision in making a global citizenship and education for sustainability a pillar of his Education First Initiative eight years ago. And my director, my boss, our director general, Audrey Azulet, has recalled UNESCO's leadership in taking forward his ambition and we are absolutely keen to contribute to lead besides you on this topic. It's about the change we need in this century. It's about what Pope Francis in Laudato Si first and Fratelli Tutti now clearly described as the principles of moral duty that we have to educate the next generation to make this world better than it is. And it's about the taking care. If I should summarize the key words for this century, which are really about the core mandate of 4.7 is about taking care, taking care of nature, environment, the planet, taking care of others, understand others, respect in their dignity and cultural diversity is about taking care of ourselves in terms of being critical citizens in order to be able to understand what's happening around us and to distinguish between fake and truth and being able to develop our own vision for a better society. So it's an ambitious mission. We know very well. Let me say just a few words in my current position with the head of co-chair of this inspiring and fantastic initiative we have, why we call it a mission. It's about missions, providing solutions, caring, strong societal relevance, set time-bound targets, work across sectors, and encourage bottom-up solutions. What we are going to do in the coming months and years is about that. Our mission has a clear recipe to follow. Let me say like this. It brings together in a high-level advisory group champions. You already mentioned, Jeff, many of them from beyond the world of education because this is not simply about transforming education, but it's about the power of education to transform society in its function of transmitting values to the next generation. And it's about an investment in knowledge, in skills, in mindsets for learning the ropes of peace and sustainability. But on the other side, let me say that our approach is a very practical one as well. Connective research, policy, action, and evidence. This target is not an add-on. It's natural cause for embedding it across curriculum development, connecting learning with life, problem-solving, aptitude, critical thinking, creativity to nurture global questions. So, a lot of skills for life and not simply skills, knowledge-based and not simply skills for job, for a better job, which is, of course, an important dimension. And this mission will create, I'm sure, and create resources for teaching and learning and build an online repository of such materials, documents from around the world. This is like a platform we are establishing today. And it will bring together different constituencies and communities, students, educators, policy makers, professionals. But I'm sure also many, many citizens of the world who feel the urgency we have and the need we don't postpone this important moral duty we have. This is about also reorienting. As an educator, let me say a few last words. Reorienting, teaching and learning at every level. And it's about instilling in every student's awareness, knowledge and behaviors. And it's about a chain of values which can really contribute to transform the world around us and to contribute to make this world a bit better. We have opportunity this year in the coming year, I mean 2021, to influence the global public debate about this urgency we feel in this room at the G7, at the G20, at the COP26. And mission 4.7 must be for all, not simply for educators, students, teachers and people who are in the field of education. This mission gives me, let me say, really a true sense of optimism about the future because you know, we are under the Pope Francis' blessing, inspirational vision, leadership, the spiritual leadership. And it brings together his wisdom, influence and capacity to to really make the change needed possible. And I thank you very much for this wonderful partnership and so excited to contribute personally and as assistant director general for education in my great organization UNESCO. Thank you. Defania, thank you for those wonderful words and for all of your guidance and inspiration for us. It will be really a joy to work together. And I think as everybody is saying, and I want to underscore an obvious point, we cannot achieve any of the SDGs if we don't put education unless we put education at the center. It is knowledge and goodwill and global citizenship that makes possible everything else that we're trying to do. And if we don't succeed on SDG4, we will not succeed on the rest, but we can succeed on SDG4. That's why we're here together today and why it's so exciting and why I'm delighted to introduce now our fourth co-chair of mission 4.7, a great entrepreneur and a great pioneer in sustainable development in real-world fabulous projects. The founder of a wonderful university, Sunway University is the chairman of the Sunway group, chancellor of Sunway University and a great benefactor of global education. Sunway University hosts SDSN throughout Asia. It hosts the SDG Academy, which is the online initiative globally for sustainable development at the university level. He's made it possible and promoted it. We have a full, as Defania said, a full library of online freely accessible, high quality training in sustainable development and our goal is to build and build and build. And this year in the midst of COVID, Sunway University pioneered a global online, all online master's degree in sustainable development to keep the initiative moving forward. That's all to say we have a great innovator and entrepreneur and visionary as our fourth co-chair. It's my honor to introduce Mr. Jeffrey Chia. Thank you, Jeff. Your holiness, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, a very good evening to all of you from Sunway City, Kuala Lumpur here in Malaysia. Of course, it is about 10 p.m. now in Malaysia. I'm honored to be invited to deliver some brief remarks as co-chairman of Mission 4.7. Let me begin by thanking his holiness, Francis, for launching this global initiative. Mission 4.7 is being undertaken at a critical moment in the history of the planet and its people. You are all familiar with the challenges we face and unless we act and act now to educate our younger generation, I fear for their future and the world they will inherit. To quote an old Chinese saying, if your plan is for one year, plan rise. If your plan is for 10 years, plan trees. If your plan is for 100 years, educate children. Ladies and gentlemen, all of us here at Sunway Group are determined to do our part towards advancing the sustainable development agenda. I am grateful to the UN SDSN for establishing Sunway University located at Sunway City Kuala Lumpur here as one of the three UN SDSN centers to oversee continent-wide sustainability initiatives. The three are New York City which oversees the Americas, Paris for Europe and Africa and Sunway City Kuala Lumpur for Asia. I am delighted that Sunway University will host the United Nations SDSN STG Academy which will play a fundamental role in Mission 4.7. All of us at Sunway regard this responsibility not only as an honor but an obligation. We believe it also testifies to our firm commitment in advancing the sustainable development agenda. This commitment is summed up in Sunway's vision statement which is to be Asia's modern corporation in sustainable development in awaiting to enrich lives for a better tomorrow. And ladies and gentlemen, to provide some context, the very birth of the Sunway Group was founded in the concept of sustainable development. It began with the construction of Sunway City Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's first integrated green township. Four decades ago, Sunway City Kuala Lumpur was an abandoned land of disused pools caused by destructive mining activity. We set about rehabilitating the 800 acres land. More than 30,000 trees have been transplanted and a complete ecosystem restored with lots of flora and fauna. We also have our own public transport system with electric buses running on specially designed elevated bus lanes. In addition, elevated covered walkways connect the city which provide a healthy and alternative means of getting around. These walkways also reduce our carbon footprint. We have built many certified green buildings. We constructed and commissioned our own water treatment plant. It recycles and purifies water from our two sunken X mining lakes to serve our community. We have also initiated a whole range of energy saving and efficiency measures. Sunway City Kuala Lumpur is now home to a driving community of more than 200,000 people living, working, playing and studying in a safe, healthy and connected environment. It is home to three universities with hostile facilities for some 10,000 students. One of Asia's largest shopping malls, Malaysia's first theme park, a 1,100 bed private hospital, three international class hotels, private residence and commercial towers. All these are built owned and managed by Sunway and we are not finished yet. We plan to integrate technology even more deeply to establish Sunway City Kuala Lumpur as a model smart sustainability of the 21st century. This unique mix of young talent, intellectual firepower, research expertise, innovation labs and commercial activities has helped shape Sunway City into a living laboratory providing real-world solutions in real time. Without being boastful, perhaps what we have achieved was best summed up by the late Mr Lee Guan Yu, the former prime minister of Singapore. When he and his wife visited us in Sunway City, he said, and I quote, Oh, this is what entrepreneurship is about. How wonderful you have transformed a wasteland into a wonderland. I would like to extend a personal invitation to all of you good people to come visit us when travel restrictions are lifted. Ladies and gentlemen, the success and growth of Sunway enable me to realize my lifelong dream, which was to set up a foundation dedicated to nation building and giving back to society. The Jeffree Chia Foundation has awarded scholarships and grants amounting to more than 150 million US dollars. The foundation also gives the 10 million US dollars to the UNSDSN to set up the Jeffree Sex Center on Sustainable Development at Sunway University five years ago. Of course, the center, as you know, is named after my good friend, Professor Sex, who is also the chairman. This year the foundation has again pledged about 10 million US dollars to the UNSDSN for use over the next five years, beginning from 2021. A substantial amount of this gift will be used to help fund the activities of SDG Academy at Sunway University. And ladies and gentlemen, I have always believed that one must have a higher purpose in life. For me personally, that purpose is to lead a fulfilling life by giving back to society and building a better world for our children. Advancing the sustainability agenda is very much part of this mission. Our efforts at Sunway and the Jeffree Chia Foundation are driven by the conviction that realizing the 17 SDGs is not the responsibility of governments alone. Building a sustainable future requires the commitment of all elements of society, the private sector, academia, civil society, and of course, every single individual. We are all in this together, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you. Jeffree, thank you for your vision, your incredible capacity to realize your vision for your leadership. And I can tell you, as you were speaking along the chats, so many people are proud of Malaysia also, but they're saying how great they wish they could be home, but this is very nice, wonderful news for Malaysia also. So we're so thrilled and we'll do a good job together. This is what an incredible opportunity. Well, we have many leaders of this work that we're going to now hear from in the next three sessions, members of a high level advisory group and members of the special academic and NGO advisory groups, world leading educators. And it's a great treat for me to now introduce the moderator for the next session. Now that we have launched, now we're going to find out in detail how to do it. And we're going to be starting on education in primary and secondary schools, education for sustainable development. And our moderator is Monica Perler, who is the CEO of the Ban Ki Moon Center for Global Citizens and does such a fantastic job. Monica gets us together in all parts of the world to brainstorm on the future. Monica, thank you for everything you do. Thank you for the partnership. And let me turn the microphone over to you. Thank you so much, Jeffrey. We are all inspired by the words that we have just heard by His Holiness and by all of the other Eminence speakers, Ban Ki Moon. It's a pleasure to have all of you gathered here today. Welcome to session two. We are, as Jeffrey said, delving right into the midst of it. We are going to look at education for sustainable development in primary and secondary schools. And indeed, as you all know, unfortunately, COVID-19 has disrupted education for millions of children across the globe. And it is our task today and for the years to come to reimagine and redesign education to build back better. And this pertains to school curricula. And there should definitely be a greater focus on SDG 4.7 and links to climate change. So this session that we are starting here now will actually discuss ways to embed these concepts of sustainable development in the K-12 school curricula. And we want to present to you strong cases why ESD is so important. So why does the world benefit from teaching 21st century skills and global citizenship to young leaders? To find that out, I have the pleasure to introduce to you amazing speakers today. We will have the pleasure of still being joined by Mrs. Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director General for Education. Also, we will hear from Amanda Abram, Program Manager of the Global Schools, STSN. We have the privilege of having Dr. Andreas Schleicher with us. He's the Director of Education and Skills at OSCD. Then Dr. Siva Kumari is joining us. She's Director General of the International Baccalaureate Organization. And we have the privilege of having two professors, one Professor Mustafa Öztürk. He's Professor at the University in Turkey, namely the Hacetepe University and Professor Abdul Karim Marzuk. He's the Director of the Executive Education Center at Al-Aqha-Wayne University in Morocco. Before we begin, let me just do brief housekeeping again. So this event is live on YouTube, as you know. We will start by hearing another statement by Stefania Giannini. We will then watch a short video of voices that are supportive of Mission 4.7 and then switch immediately to the panel. Now with the panelists, we will hear statements by them, but all of you in the audience are strongly encouraged to let us know your questions and also to interact with each other during the session. We have Q&A, hopefully time permits, and at the end we will stop with a so-called lightning round where each of the panelists will give one snapshot of what we should take away. Please keep your microphones off unless you are a speaker. Watch that there is simultaneous translation for those of you who need it, and keep on your cameras. We like to speak to you, to the people, and see you, and please use the hashtags, as was mentioned before. So without much further ado, dear Stefania Giannini, UNESCO, Assistant Director General for Education, who is really one of the top UN officials in the field of implementing the Education 2030 agenda, please give us your remarks. Thank you. Thank you very much, Monica. We are now going, as I said, in this session to the real substance of the Mission 4.7 from the angle of curriculum development and the importance of this ESD and global citizenship for changing the model we teach and we learn today. So let me start with a very concrete example to quote, this is the case of a primary school in Zimbabwe, where one of our laureates of UNESCO annual Education for Sustainable Development prize implemented a very, very interesting project on the ground. It's about the school started up a permaculture program that has taught some 700 students how to reduce deforestation, recycle, waste matter, produce food and manage land. So very concrete actions in a part, in the region of the world where these issues are really very much about managing the development but also daily life and how they improve their own daily life. So this is to say that I take this example because among many others we can refer to, it embodies the principles of Education for Sustainable Development, a whole school approach that is inclusive, participatory, practical and sensitive to the context where the school is based. To cut it short, I think we have to see that we cannot learn how to protect your own environment or also on the other side of the coin about global citizenship, prevent conflict, combat prejudice or misinformation through a textbook or an academic exercise alone. Of course, it's important. I said before it's about knowledge first, but the second immediate step is about awareness. And then the first step is about changing behaviors and try to influence mindset in order to change behavior around the school and the school context. And this is to say about the call of mission point seven and the Education for Sustainable Development is a call for radical transformation in teaching and learning practices. We must say very clearly, education must transform itself in order to be able to transform society. And this shift is not is only in its childhood. Let me say like this, our education systems worldwide, sorry, remain strongly focused on academic achievement alone or mostly focusing on that. And we have really to introduce an holistic approach to these topics as they are holistic in their purpose and in the ambition they carry on. But the skills that underline target 4.7 can help also to improve education quality across the board. This is about combining the cognitive, social, emotional and behavioral dimensions of learning. And this is what makes us truly human. I said a bit before, knowledge and understanding, connecting to connected to empathy and the sense of belonging to a common humanity and the sense of belonging to your own community. So valorizing the identity of being part of your own community in all this, in all this dimension, we find the motivation to act in ways that can benefit others in our society. And this is very much about thinking differently and acting very much differently from what we are doing or what we are being done so far. According to a study in ESCO, conducted in a selection of countries from all regions of the world, the behavioral dimension received the least attention in programs on education for sustainable development and global citizenship. With social emotional skills given slightly more consideration, but far less than cognitive ones. Neuroscience today tells us very clearly the importance of connecting these three areas of learning to take hold and be transformative. But education systems have not yet integrated this vision. So our job about this mission for the 4.7 initiative is very much discussing with our colleagues, educators, teachers, principals of schools, also ministers of education and their teams how we can embed better these principles and going beyond the more strictly speaking academic dimension. The last point is about the need of accelerating this transformation. Some previous speakers already touched upon this point. So what are the levers to accelerate the transformation we have in our hands? Of course, international organizations play a key role, in my opinion, by providing platforms for dialogue, providing a platform for sharing good experiences. And we have seen these with education for sustainable development in ESCO is carrying its mandate on debt and you are launching next year a new framework on this specific topic. And Germany will be the hosting country of a big conference in Berlin where this platform will be launched. But of course, this doesn't happen overnight. When it's about changing the mindset, changing the model of learning and teaching is not something that we can achieve in a while, we know. It requires expertise from universities, civil society organizations and institutions like the Banking Moon Centers, which has the leadership on these topics to build capacities concretely on the ground. And the same process, of course, holds true for global citizenship. It's a concept that takes time, definitely, to unpack and to translate into daily practices. Still, UNESCO is working very much on that. We have a competency framework for global citizenship education, which is helping to shape a national education strategy. You can mention some countries which are very much committed to translate and put in practices principles from Cambodia to Colombia and passing through the Sahel region. So, it's still a real common work to be done together. And it's about a target which is not, let me say, a technical issue related simply to some small amendments or modifications to be put in teachers training or in curriculum development. All these dimensions I try to summarize briefly are really very much important to give us the technical and knowledge platform to accelerate the mission for point seven. And I think I do believe that this initiative really should contribute to develop a more solid evidence based around the target for point seven. And it's about accelerating the SDG4 road map as a whole and the true SDG4. And as my co-chair Professor Sacks mentioned before, it's about achieving all the other goals of the 2030 agenda. Thank you. Thank you so much. It was very inspirational and very insightful and dense with information. I take away that yes, we do need a holistic approach. We need to change our minds. We need to have a discussion competency framework will be key and acceleration will be key. Allow me still to follow up with one question to you. As we are approaching Christmas, people are formulating wish lists. And I would like to know what would you see Mission 4.7 should fulfill? What would be on your wish list? And what is something that you might not want to take along? What is something that you do want to take along? UNESCO has come so far when it comes to SDG4. UNESCO has done an incredible job of leadership, but I'm sure that there are condensed lessons learned that you would like to see Mission 4.7 to carry forward and others that you might not want to see to be carried forward. What would it be in a nutshell? Well, let me say this is a special Christmas for all of us. It's still within an unprecedented situation we are living in all regions of the world. And it's a Christmas where we can already wrap up about some lessons learned in the last few months. In education, we lived the more disruptive impact we have never saw in history with 1.7 million children out of school. And schools, because of the closure, of course, that many countries were somehow obliged to decide. And we also saw governments and school systems relying on e-learning as we are doing today, by the way, and on technology. So the more we leverage technology, the more we see technology becoming an important component of innovation in education and education for the future. And the more it's important, in my opinion, to leverage the content component of education. And these two sides of the same coin, as I said a bit before, taking care through education, within education, of nature and the planet, and taking care of others, and ourselves as main actors of our destiny and the destiny of the entire humanity, according to our behaviors, individual behaviors and collective behaviors. I think this is the good balance we have to find under this special Christmas tree this year. And I'm sure that we are on the right track and they're sure that together we can get it. Thanks so much. I do know that you have to attend to pressing business. And hence, I would like to thank you at this stage for your very valuable contributions. It's always a privilege to work with UNESCO, with you, with of course, DJ Audre Azulé, because UNESCO has literally achieved a lot. Ten more years to go for the SDGs. We are pressed in time. There is urgency and we are all keenly observing Germany and May and what will be basically launched with a new framework in May next year. We will eagerly be waiting. Thank you very much, Stefania Giannini. Thank you. With that, I would like to turn to the video. The video of supporting voices, two supporting voices from the Middle East for Mission 4.7. One of these voices is by Dr. Tariq Alghurk. He's the Chief Executive Officer of Dubai Cares and another voice is Mr. Dino Barki, who is Chief Executive Officer of James Education. And I do hope that the Regis, that the technical helpers can now play the video that is their remarks summarizing their support for Mission 4.7. I'll jump in here and share at just one moment. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Target 4.7 is key to make all of the SDGs a reality because it provides learners with the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development and global citizenship. Dubai Cares plays an instrumental role in helping achieve SDG4 as it has successfully launched education programs reaching over 20 million beneficiaries in 60 developing countries since its inception in 2007. As part of its global advocacy efforts, Dubai Cares will be hosting Rewired Summit in December 2021. This Global Education Summit that will be held in person at Expo 2020 Dubai site during the Knowledge and Learning Week will serve as a timely reminder for countries to fast track their efforts to achieve the SDG4 target while showcasing success stories from around the world and exploring how these could be scaled up for enhanced global impact. We will 4.7 all the best in its efforts and we remain committed to working closely with Ban Ki-moon Center for Global Citizens and all global stakeholders to make progress towards achieving SDG4. At GEM Schools we care about a values-led education and seek to encourage our students to develop this mindset. We nurture our students to show all the qualities of kindness, respect, empathy, helpfulness and compassion to their friends, family and the wider global community. Mission 4.7 is an effort to support the education of a generation of global leaders with global citizenship values, real tangible knowledge of the SDGs and 21st century skills that we believe is the real path to improving the state of our world for all. Since 1968 we at GEMs education have been driven by a singular purpose to provide a quality education to every child and every learner no matter where they are in the world. We hope that Mission 4.7 will be equally successful and want to congratulate everyone on the launch today. Let us raise our ambition to inspire a generation of future leaders and change their goals. So ladies and gentlemen Mission 4.7 and with that implicitly you have also seen a logo that will provide us with a banner for the effort that we are undertaking. Gillian thanks so much for helping us with the video. So indeed we're going to go to the panel discussion now and I am very very curious to hear what our high-level experts have to say. What we want to explore in this panel discussion is very much multi-fold. We are talking K-12 education, we are talking primary and secondary education, but particularly how can GCD and ESD meet the challenges of the future of work, the future of life. I even claim the future of humanity. Do we need to rethink schools? So this is a very bold question but this is something that I would like to hear from our panelists. I also would like to hear how far have we come and what are the barriers that persist? What does it need for a transition? So can you give us practical examples and can they be scaled? So you can see I as a moderator have plenty of questions and I want to get the insights by our panelists and we will start with Amanda Abram. She is program manager of global schools and an expert in the intersection of STG 4.7, teacher professional development and K-12 education. So Amanda, without further ado, the floor is yours. Thank you so much, Monica. I'll also be speaking as well with the director of global schools, Sam Loney, so he will start it off and then I will continue talking about global schools. Thank you very much, Amanda. I hope you can hear me okay and thank you, Monica. Once again, on behalf of global schools and the SDSN, we're very proud of this initiative. Two years ago when we proposed the idea we could have never imagined it would gain so much traction and again it's thanks to the incredible partnership of the patrons and coaches but also colleagues such as Monica, Chandrika, Alexander and the rest of the team. It also shows what a great appetite there is out there for this topic and it's important. So we're very excited for the journey ahead but I think one of the awesome very important questions and I think one of the main ones is what was the motivation behind such an initiative and why do we need such an initiative and I think there's a story in this. There are approximately 1.4 billion children in school around the world at the moment and the most important question is are we doing enough to prepare these children for a future? Are we equipping them with the necessary knowledge, values and skills to better navigate this very uncertain future that's awaiting them but also to give them the actual agency and empowerment to build resilient and prosperous community? COVID-19 has shown how fragile this system is and why individuals need to have the critical thinking capabilities as well as systems thinking and many many other important learning domains that you know her excellency Stefania Giannini referred to and of course education for sustainable development is a key enabler for this transformation but we also have to recognize that many public education systems around the world are overstretched, underfunded and dealing with even the most basic challenges of education which in part might explain the limitations in the implementation and scaling of education from sustainable development and you know multiple UNESCO reports have pointed out to this that even at the very classroom levels at the very classroom level teachers are struggling to fit in the entire curriculum and dealing with the challenges of the existing content let alone additional content but at the same time we know and these are recent studies that have that have shown in particular one from Stanford University which has done you know a systematic analysis of a number of other studies which show that education for sustainable development is not just good for society but it's also good for education it increases student engagement class it creates a better school environment it you know increases teacher satisfaction it increases attendance and there are many many other benefits which actually can help the very basic attendance of education and this this this this systematic approach I think is is clearly so as advocates of sustainable development we really need to work very closely with the national governments and to offer support where necessary in designing and implementing a high quality ESD curriculum but also a comprehensive training of teachers to enable them to as easily transition into this new model of curriculum so this transformation really is key and for that there needs to be very clear thinking about the localization process so really we we also need to better define what ESD is and how it will look in in different settings that it is not just about environmental education but a whole spectrum of other issues including global citizenship 21st century skills and human rights and and of course and I think the most important part of this is partnering with national research institutions universities think tanks and of course the various ministries to create these comprehensive courses but also to localize them to ensure that they're not just one class over the you know the lifetime of the student but rather a critical component of of education in every step of the way and of course to scale to monitor the results and be able to scale that so I think these are all very important and I think establishing these principles can be very helpful and then working at the local level the late sir Ken Robinson said that education is not a mechanical process it's it's an organic process and what can we do to support education systems around the world organically really aspire to these very very important transformations that we need at global schools we've truly wanted to understand the problems and the limitations at the local level and to find out what it would really take to transform learning and repurpose the curriculum at the national level despite these limitations so 12 months ago actually we started our research pilot program in three countries Ghana Turkey and Morocco we did this in partnership with Muhammad the sixth foundation for environmental protection and the al-Akhwan University in Morocco Millennium Promise and University of Education in Ghana and the Hasatapa University in Turkey we were also extremely lucky to have the support of our wonderful academic advisors during this process including professors Oren Pizmoni Levy Felicia Sibis from Columbia University professor Fernando Rimas from Harvard and professor Alan Reed from Monash who guided us through this localization process and really helped us you know create a a a comprehensive process for the nationalization of curriculum so 12 months later we're very happy to announce that since last year more than 60 researchers have been recruited across three countries to lead this project they have worked across four separate languages three different national education systems and these languages are English Turkish Arabic and French they have been working very hard to audit the curriculum and the textbooks they've been identifying and understanding the gaps and limitations and more importantly now they've been using this information we've been using this information for understanding where the interventions are necessary to design the relevant curriculum content to design the lesson plans to be integrated into the national curriculum of course some incredible results have emerged and and you will hear about these shortly now we're now in the final phase of this research project and a report will be coming to you very soon and most importantly we hope that this methodology and experience of our partners and these three countries will be used as a basis for the localization work of mission 4.7 as we will begin working with various national and local governments we in other words we want this methodology and experience to build on the wonderful existing work of UNESCO and essentially serve as a toolkit for the localization of the SDGs and their integration into curriculum but of course also as a way to support teachers students to transform learning and in the classroom so we're very excited for the journey ahead and as global schools we are looking to replicate these success stories in other countries through mission 4.7 and with that I hand over to my colleague Amanda Abram to highlight some of the global schools work on the ground Amanda if you have the floor thank you so much Sam so what you've heard so far is since its inception global schools has really been able to accomplish incredible work in collaboration with its partners and researchers to make a true impact in this space but also we're doing a lot in the advocacy front on the grassroots front to really impact every student and lifelong learner and now as one of the founding partners of mission 4.7 we can really continue this work and take it forward so last year we trained 450 community volunteers on the importance of education for sustainable development these volunteers are known as global schools advocates and we tasked them with taking the SDGs to K to 12 students that are in the school communities that are the most left behind where they can understand the local context and speak in the local languages to these school leaders teachers and students and their mission was to motivate school communities to take up education for sustainable development and they successfully completed presentations at 2000 school communities and reached out to 7700 schools about sustainable development education and we have a variety of stories impact stories about these advocates which I'd love to share briefly I will say we had a story from an advocate in Bangladesh and what they did is they understood the local community context around SDG 6 clean water and realized that motivating that school leader to work on a water filtration system within the school community was the best way to educate students about the environment and about the SDGs and take this forward in curricula and operations so through this work of the advocates about a thousand schools in 80 countries encompassing 45,000 teachers and 850,000 students have pledged now to go forward with global schools and integrate education for sustainable development within their school curricula and operations and we really believe that this is evidence that with the proper roadmap and with the proper inspiration from these local advocates that schools can and schools will join this global movement and going forward we are going to be deepening our impact in these school communities by hosting our first cohort of global schools advocates specifically for teachers and the purpose of this is to train teachers on these concepts and create community focal points with the ability to influence the knowledge actions and behaviors of K to 12 students within the local context we've also in the past partnered with international baccalaureate to coordinate a campaign which generated 632 sustainability projects with students across the world in IB schools so going forward we really believe that through the support of mission 4.7 as well as the other founders and partners of mission 4.7 that we will achieve this vision of successfully promoting high quality localized education for sustainable development across school communities SDG 4.7 as we have heard from all of the speakers is really about educating the future generations on how to achieve this agenda and we believe that in the future these younger generations these K to 12 students they will be at the forefront of these future movements they will be at the future Vatican youth symposium and these students are going to be setting the new sustainable development agenda beyond the SDGs beyond 2030 and they need this education in order to advocate for these concepts and values throughout history so global schools really looks forward to expanding its work through mission 4.7 and advocating for education for sustainable development to governor to governments as well as to K to 12 students and all lifelong learners thank you so much and I'm looking forward to the questions and panel discussion excellent Sam and Amanda how passionate are you about it it's wonderful to hear what global schools has already achieved and particularly Sam when you were alluding to the case studies that we are looking at we can learn a lot from Ghana Turkey Morocco and we have the opportunity to to get into that in more detail actually with other speakers I do see that there is very active engagement on the chat which I gladly encourage so please do jot down your question jot down ideally also your country and address the question to the panelists directly because we will pick them up we will collect them and come back to them later so if you have a question to Sam or to Amanda make a note at the side I already see one here for Sam directly however before we do the Q&A's we will go to the next speaker which is Dr. Andreas Schleicher Dr. Andreas Schleicher is the director for education and skills at the OECD and he initiated and oversees the program for international student assessment many of you will know that as PISA and many other international instruments he has worked over 20 years with ministers and educational leaders to improve education so Dr. Andreas Schleicher let me pass the floor to you for your statement. Thanks so much Monika and thanks for inviting me these are clearly you know very challenging times for education but as we can see here in this panel it's also the time of both extraordinary you know technological and social innovation in education anyway this is the moment ESD has always prepared us for but at the same time I think the current COVID crisis is just a massive amplifier and accelerator of many developments that have been with us for some time globalization technological chief have connected people you know countries continents in ways that have just dramatically improved both our individual and our collective potential but as we've seen this same forces have made our you know well more volatile more ambiguous more uncertain even you know well before COVID we've seen a growing disconnect between the infinite growth imperative and the finite resources of our planet between the financial economy and the real economy between the wealthy and the poor between the concept of our gross domestic product and the well-being of people between technology and social needs between governance and the voicelessness of people and I'm not saying that schools are responsible for all of that but I think we should not underestimate the impact the values the attitudes the skills the knowledge of people have that we promote in our schools technology and virus can fundamentally disrupt our social and economic structures but the implications are never predetermined the important thing it's always the nature of our collective responses to those disruptions that are going to determine their outcomes what we mobilize in response and this is where ESD is so fundamental mission 4.7 sort of hits the nail really not the SDGs offer the answer to this they are sort of the missing piece of the globalization puzzle they are the glue that hold together the centrifugal forces in this age of accelerations but again it's going to be educators who hold the key to what extent the SDGs become a real contract between you know citizens and that's really I think where the promise of ESD lies now the one thing that I think we all figured out in Monica you asked the question of you know do we need to fundamentally rethink education clearly education is no longer about teaching students something it's about helping them develop a reliable compass and the tools to navigate through this you know volatile complex increasingly the ambiguous world success in schooling today is about building curiosity now opening minds it's about building compassion opening hearts and it's about courage you know can we mobilize our cognitive social and emotional resources to actually take action and I think these are also going to be our biggest bets against the biggest threats of our times now the ignorance the closed mind hate the closed heart and you know fear the enemy of of agency now we simply live in this world in which the kind of things that are easy to teach maybe easy to test have also become easy to digitize to automate they're evaporating from our labor markets now we know how to educate second-class robots you know people are very good at repeating what we tell them actually in the age of artificial intelligence we need to think a lot harder about what it means to be human education the society around us is that product of education I'm not saying you know that state of the art knowledge is not going to remain important but the world no longer rewards us just for what we know now Google knows everything it rewards us for what we can do and what we do with what we know now science isn't just about you know physics and chemistry it's about you know can you think like a scientist can you use these tools of time science to understand and change the world history is not just about you know remembering names and dates it's about can you think like an historian now do you understand how the narrative of a society has emerged how it developed how it advanced and sometimes how it unravels and the context change what does it mean for today's world schools are very good at breaking down big problems into small bits and pieces and then training students how to solve those pieces now but the world today creates value by synthesizing those different pieces now basically to make connections between ideas that usually seem unrelated now by connecting the dots where the next big idea and innovation is going to come from and exactly that requires being familiar with you know and also receptive to the knowledge of other fields to be able to think across the boundaries of school subjects to bring people together and that brings me to the next topic in today's schools you know we are very very good at teaching students to learn individually and at the end of the school year you know we study for the individual achievements but in the more interdependent the world becomes the more we need to think about you know great collaborators great orchestrators people who understand how other people think and work whether as a scientist or as an artist how other people live in different cultures and different traditions people who can live with themselves who can live with others who can live with the planet in our latest business assessment we looked at this in what we call global competency and it was sobering to see how limited you know our education is preparing people for this now in the past schools where you know technological islands with technology usually conserving existing educational practice rather than transforming it and the future need to schools need to be so much better to use technology to liberate learning from past conventions and to connect learners and learning in much more powerful ways and again I think this crisis has shown what is possible in this field it has moved those kinds of ideas from the margins to the center and finally you know the past was divided you know you had teachers and content divided by subjects and students separated by expectations about their futures now that we project very early on into their lives schools are very good to keep students inside and the rest of the world outside often we see a lack of engagement of families the reluctance of teachers to look upwards to the next school of schools to look out to the next country the future needs to be a lot more connected a lot more integrated schools is not you know a public service a public policy product it's only going to succeed if it's a whole of society project and I think that's what we see here in this panel thank you I always love to listen to you you are inspirational and indeed the latest OECD study on the global competencies is eye-opening so I recommend to everyone maybe someone can post a link to it in our chat it it does shed a light on where we stand and as you pointed out correctly partly it's sobering so we need lots more curiosity compassion courage that is taught whenever you speak I really do think we all rethink schools all right without much better do the next panelist that we have is someone very special Dr. Siva Kumari she is the director general of the international baccalaureate and she is the first woman to serve in this post she also obviously leads the overall strategic direction of IB worldwide and has decades of experience in education so it's my real pleasure to give the floor to Dr. Siva Kumari thank you Monica and it's been such an interesting dialogue it's great to hear Sam and Andreas thank you for inviting me to this important mission 4.7 dialogue I want to talk about two topics that you put forward to us Monica one is do we need to rethink education and the second is how can SDGs be embedded in teaching and learning so we at the IB have just completed a week long global conference with the theme re-imagined the future with about 4,500 educators around the world I can tell you that educators are always ready when given the tools and then given the chance to talk about this topic and engage in it and implement it so like you we believe that constantly rethinking education is a perennial requirement it's been our core value for 52 years as we consistently reinvent and co-create with our teachers worldwide for our teachers worldwide I think we can all agree that the pandemic has put teaching learning and schooling front and center for children of all ages parents have had to become teacher aids or even teachers children have learned without the constraints of schools known routines have to have to be reinvented and we've seen unfortunately that the financial divide and how it's starkly manifest itself in the educational attainment of children a problem unfortunately that will be with us for a very long time so I ask the question if not now when will the global community give education first priority if not now when um so the other question is reimagining the future is not just necessary as a reaction to upturn circumstances it is essential in existential terms we need to think of all that worked during this unprecedented time what do we want to keep what did we as a world learn together in education what didn't work where is the human touch irreplaceable where can we effectively and purposefully supplement with technology and as we return to the post-covid returning to business as usual will be a waste of this global crisis so if not now when will we realize that we need to go beyond rhetoric to create meaningful and sustainable systemic change in the education industry the important industry that humans have to safeguard humanity and Monica I agree with you that this is a problem about humanity the IB can contribute based on its experience in vastly diverse schools across the world we can state without a doubt that global citizenship is a demonstrable reality and it is embraced by teachers students and parents that students of all ages in all types of schools can be educated to care for the world's most pressing problems while achieving their own academic requirements the IB explicitly speaking of it now switching to SDGs and how they can be embedded in curriculum the IB explicitly and priorly includes the aims of the SDGs into our curriculum for example sustainability it's a central concept for our environmental systems and societies course in our IB economics course SDGs are addressed by investigating why is economic development uneven around the world in our business management course students consider the impact of the triple bottom line of people planet and profit in design technology course we dedicate 25 percent of the course syllabus to sustainability addressing sustainable development sustainable consumption sustainable design and sustainable innovation in our service requirement course students and schools embrace SDGs and we have countless examples and Sam and his colleague talked about the examples that we provided in 2018 through a large project we did with global schools this is how one educational system can systemically and systematically educate our young about these important issues so if we in the IB can do this I believe that others undoubtedly can do so too we opened our recent conference by showcasing young people ages between 14 and 17 who have created amazing projects to address SDGs from aquaponics to address hunger to career opportunities for autistic children in Bangladesh to creating an app to educate for CPR to food storage to educating their communities about the inequalities they see and so many more these are young people who during this pandemic have remained active and engaged with their communities tackling local and global problems devising solutions individually or in teams or collectively with their community while sharing their thinking with the world of peers who can be inspired and improve on these solutions within their own communities this is what education has the power to do we look forward to contributing our experience to this group to SDSN and to global schools as you think about in these issues deeply and we look forward to serving alongside you in addressing this important cause thank you thanks so much it's wonderful to have IB represented by you it is an honor to have you with us today really let me turn the floor to our next speaker professor Mustafa Öztürk he's a professor at the Hacetepe University in Ankara Turkey and an awarded scholar he's currently engaged in designing implementing and evaluating ESD training programs particularly for teachers pre-service and in-service in Turkey professor the floor is yours thank you very much Monica good morning good afternoon and good evening for all the people listening to us around the world I will try to summarize what we have done so far about global schools program in Turkey and what we are planning to do further so we started our journey just after the sixth Vatican youth symposium with two questions in mind how do global perspectives of sustainable development and global citizenship education find a way into the local educational policies in Turkey number one and secondly how well does Turkish national curriculum prepare generations for global citizenship and sustainable feature to answer these two questions we perform two types of situation analysis a policy analysis on five key educational policy documents with respect to the basic concepts and competencies for sustainability and the curriculum analysis on 23 subject specific and one single base k to 12 curriculum documents with respect to the specific learning objectives of ESD as suggested by UN and UNESCO we have had three different teams in this process the national research team consisting of six experts who are leading all research activities the advisory committee consisting of 22 members who are academicians educational experts ministry officials NGO representatives school counselors school principals and of course teachers and thirdly we had the executive committee members consisting of 32 teachers we have so a longer report about the results but I would like to briefly summarize what we have found the findings from the policy analysis revealed that the concepts of sustainable development and the first century skills seem to have more places in the policy documents whereas global citizenship as a concept does not get enough significance in the same documents as a second point most of the key competencies suggested by UNESCO are significantly reflected in Turkish educational policies even though they are mostly implicit regarding the curriculum analysis the top three SDGs that receive the highest number of references from the national learning outcomes are SDG 11 sustainable cities and communities SDG 3 good health and well-being which is highly critical nowadays as you can imagine and SDG 12 responsible consumption and production the overall findings reveal that both national curriculum and educational policies reflect an adequate level of emphasis on ESD and GCE even though most of the emphasis happens to be implicit and changes across different subjects as well as different educational levels as the second step we worked on the lesson plans suggested by global schools program and decided whether they fit in the national curriculum and confirm with the general educational goals of the minister of national education those 32 teachers in the executive committee carried out the evaluations and reviews on all those six lesson plans and provided the initial feedback on documents in the meantime we constructed a network of ESD leader teachers who were certified about education for sustainable development and now ready to implement those lesson plans in their classrooms now what's next in fact we had planned to pilot all those plans months ago across the country at different educational levels in diverse educational settings however as you might guess the pandemic blocked our ways and slowed down the whole process unfortunately because of the lockdown all over the country we were not able to progress in the piloting process when the pandemic allows us to do so we would like to implement those lesson plans in real classrooms and get the feedback from teachers and students before finishing I would like to share another important step for me personally and for the field academically I am in the process of editing a forthcoming publication entitled educational response inclusion and empowerment for sdgs how do education systems contribute to raise global citizens this big is going this book is going to be published by springer and I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to submit your work for consideration in this publication if you have further questions and concerns please do not hesitate to contact me I would like to finish my words with very similar ideas to the previous panelists I would like to say that the basic way to equip the current generation and future generations with the awareness knowledge skills attitudes and behaviors required for the vision of sustainability is possible with an interdisciplinary and project-based educational approach that emphasizes research cooperation and creativity so this transformation could only be realized by activating systemic continuous innovative adaptable and transformative learning methods in all processes of education including analysis design development implementation and evaluation so we need to include not only students teachers curriculum policies as well as all social circle circle around the kid and the parents in this process thank you very much for your listening wonderful it's for me it's always so encouraging to hear examples from the ground where things have really progressed well and they can serve as an example for many others so I do hope that other countries will follow suit and will venture into similar processes thanks a lot let us listen to one more very detailed example hopefully by professor Abdul Karim mazuk he's the director of the executive education center at al a kawaii university ifran in marocco he is actually a geospatial expert and he lectures and researches in the fields of geography environmental management and geographic information systems and remote sensing so we are very curious to hear your remarks professor marzuk with the florida thank you monica excellence and distinguished audience i am really delighted to talk about the project on pilot project about the global school which is launched in marocco and taken care by a marocan team so before i start i will just give the floor i will take this opportunity also since my calling my previous course i already talked about the methodology so we'll take maybe one minute to just to put this in context in terms of who was behind this in terms locally here in marocco so you have already introduced the foundation mohammed six for environment protection which is was established in 2001 under his majesty king mohammed six and then with the effective presidency by her royal highnesses princess lalla lalla hasla so and the foundation of course uh you know its main mission is education and we're very happy to have this in marocco and awareness on environmental issue and sustainable development so and it's open to public and it's for uh you know children school children politicians economic and decision makers and the global public uh on it's using its academic arm if you want we have the uh the hassan second international center for environment and training which is also the the academic arm of the foundation mohammed six which has mainly for interconnected missions that's one is relying on the knowledge and the experience developed around the challenges of sustainable development by relevant stakeholders raising awareness and training actors and decision makers on major environmental and sustainable development issues and then ensuring the synergies sharing and communicating with foundations partner and large communities and also the last uh for interconnected mission is capitalizing and valorizing the lessons learned from different programs carried by the foundation and its its pedagogy and its resources so on the uh and then we're very happy to have those two uh elements which the main uh in you know national institution that helps in this so to get to our maroccan project uh you know uh pilot we're happy that the letter of intention was signed in april 2020 between the mohammed six foundation for environment protection and the un sustainable development uh solution network and we started this project based and then we have gathered four main players so we have the hassan the uh international center for uh environmental training the ministry which is uh you know a major player of national education vocational training higher education and scientific research and then we have two a major institution higher education institution which is a university in infran which is a liberal art uh you know a university model following the american model and then we have the national school of minds in in in rebar these are the main uh player so the project basically we were hoping that uh and that's what we're working on is basically to mapping the sdgs in the k12 education that's the main uh element in this so and then later we will propose a course as a model where we will map and then produce what is missing in our curriculum k12 using the sdgs and then later on which is the third step is to test the model and upscale the model so basically the principal indicator while working in the project without going into uh much details i think you have received the report is that the Moroccan pilot project we used six regional and national we used six national and regional workshops the group of representatives from different actors from the minister of education teachers in educational inspectors we have about 30 we have 20 multi-city plenary members of the national committee and then we looked and we mapped a huge project of about 284 books from the Moroccan curriculum it's all the Moroccan curriculum from k12 third year to the baccalaureate which is a huge number of books that we looked using the three levels in the you know american you know k12 the primary the middle school and the high school uh together so we as other as our other colleagues in and other you know countries we looked at two aspects one is the policy analysis and one is the curriculum analysis so on the policy analysis we looked at four Moroccan policy and legal document the first one is the uh mou charter the second is the strategic vision the framework law and then the legislative outcome on the uh as well as we looked at the UNESCO publication on education for sustainable uh development goals learning objectives and then we looked also at dsn and worksheet for mapping the exercise which was kind of a shared document in terms of its methodology on the curriculum of course we looked at the curriculum and all the scientific and non-scientific uh subject so uh and then the main conclusion that they would like to share with you our first is that uh morocco initiated the analysis of its school curriculum as part of a macro study of policies and curriculum that's UNESCO 2019 based on UNESCO's work on global citizenship education and educating for sustainable development morocco as you know is a single national uses a single national curriculum and the analysis covered all Moroccan schools and educational texts for mapping the presence of education for sustainable development 21st century and the education for global citizenship the Moroccan education curriculum does include content does include content and language that further the country's global citizenship education 21st century skills and sustainable development commitment the analysis the fifth the fifth uh conclusion is that the analysis of the four document to relate to policy and the analysis of the curriculum in its k-12 levels clearly reinforced and stated the following so the first element is that generalizing and promoting quality education the second one is the gender equality and then decent work and economic growth and reduced inequality without going into the details of the presentation which is was covered but that's the general analysis uh finding so the the sixth uh conclusion is that the presence of variation in the reference to sdgs depending on the discipline so there were some variation of course between levels between the three levels and the emphasize on one of the sdgs overall but overall the Moroccan curriculum shows a significant presence of sdgs at all levels but the question now is how this program is taught and how students learn the concept and how instructor helps students and adapt the concept to the reality of Morocco this is very important because we're not just looking at the curriculum and itself but later on we should about the receiving which is the student and the mediation which is basically the faculty member so the pilot project was important considering the the integration of sustainable development objectives in the first four years of the primary and the middle school and announced by the Moroccan ministry of education in july 2020 in the new primary school curriculum for the start of the school year 2021 so we have reached the level when we have the what we have developed the lessons and then now is that we will move on the action plan for the remaining phase which is the three basic phase which is one the the remaining phase is the test of and evaluation so we need to test those lessons that we have developed and with COVID-19 we have our under restrictions but I think soon we will move in we will have our next meeting it's just tomorrow to look at how we will test and then we will evaluate get feedback from educator the phase seven is the implementation on the roadmap so we need to consolidate the results and then with the minister of national education professional training and higher education and establish a roadmap for the scaling up and and full implementation of education 23rd so the last phase will just be the final report and toolkit that it's kind of collaborative work where we will compile sorry all the research results of the three pilot project and then designed for comprehensive tool kit for the benefit of our school and also to implement for education 2030 and then before I finish I would like also in parallel to this project we have also developed the Achaun University you know a competition what we call the short story competition on SDGs and we have launched this this year and then we have about seven short stories selected as the best one by you know high school students who have wrote you know short stories and they would be based on all SDGs on the 17 SDGs and they will be published by by AY they are being finalized but we will just you know maybe in the next two weeks they will be available and then they can share them with you all thank you thank you so much it's been a very comprehensive insight into the into the policy revisions that had to be undertaken and still are in the process of being undertaken in Morocco and it's interesting because we if we transfer this knowledge to other countries much of what you have achieved already will be very interesting testing cases now ladies and gentlemen we have had a very active discussion in the chat and I just want to highlight some of the points before I turn questions to to our panelists so there was a remark by that UNS co-associated schools should probably partner with mission 4.7 well noted we have the presence of world's largest lesson we're very happy that Alison Bellwood has joined us and gave us an insight in the world's largest lesson we have we've also seen that someone was was very validly saying why don't we also focus on the earliest years the earliest years of education where we really are laying the foundations that we eventually will build on with cognitive and behavioral knowledge so that's an interesting one we might come back to it and then one theme that came occasionally was the digital access and learning and technology and its increased importance and I think that several panelists will actually have an opinion on that one so we see that technology has impacted a lot and particularly during the pandemic has become crucial so ladies and gentlemen we have seen a point of view from global schools we have seen a point of view from the OECD that definitely with PISA and other assessments has really got a vested insight into where we stand the status quo but also where we should go we have heard from IB very inspirational how leaders can be educated and we have heard test cases from Morocco and Turkey so let me point the following questions to the following speakers it's now tough for the first one because he has to answer immediately the others can think about their questions so the first question that I picked up is for Andreas Schlecher because I would like to know from your vantage point how much will technology impact the education of the future how much is technology crucial for implementing what the OECD has already recognized as necessity I will ask a second question I give you time to prepare Sam to you on the theory of change of mission 4.7 another participant was asking for the theory of change of mission 4.7 another theme that came up was the involvement of youth in policymaking and I'm wondering if I have any volunteer from our case studies to tell us and illustrate how youth was involved be it in Turkey be it in Morocco and then of course I have a last question for Siva Kumari if time allows IB has managed to create incredible leaders many of the world's leaders are actually IB educated what are the key ingredients is to make that possible I encourage everyone to answer in one minute is that possible I do hope so Andreas Schlecher the floor is yours with the question on the impact of technology sorry technology has enormous potential to fundamentally transform learning environments you know artificial intelligence can make learning so much more interactive so much more you know adaptive to the individual kind of learner preferences you can use big data and you know learning analytics to give teachers so much better information on how different students learn differently that's the potential at the very same time we I think the crisis has also taught us that learning is not a transactional business it's a social it's a relational phenomenon you know the one thing that students are going to remember 10 years from now from this crisis is who was the teacher who looked out for them who understood their dreams and passion who was there you know when they needed help and support you know technology is going to amplify great teaching but it's not going to replace poor teaching and the kind of transactional model so I think yeah I think it will I also think you know at the moment a good education is such a scarce good and we are not going to extrapolate from what we have you know to serve the world I think there will be big bottlenecks and I think technology can help us overcome them spread better practice make education learning more accessible but I do think you know we should not you know give up what is the core the heart of education that's where my concerns are that you know we again you know if you focus on educating second-class robots you know by just you know focusing on that kind of that's sort of my only caveat but yes I see the potential wonderful very much to the point Sam let me turn the floor immediately to you the theory of change for mission 4.7 what's your take on this one yeah so I think just actually also reflecting on what Andrea said the role of teachers being able to support teachers and being able to really give them the tools and resources so that they can actually do this effectively and we all know how important they are I remember my very first teachers from Mr. Akbar and Mr. Nazari and and as I mean Mr. Amina all the way now and they have had a profound impact on on and the motivation for for this kind of work and it kind of went back to a lot of discussions that I had and a number of other colleagues had with some of the people in fact who are in attendance here to explore what are the gaps how can we better prepare children for the future and and where are really the the missing pieces and how can these missing pieces be brought together and of course it very clearly was was you know it occurred to me that it's not possible to do it with one organization or one initiative alone and that a space is really needed where different types of organizations can work together they can learn from each other's expertise you know learning from the incredible expertise of the OECD and the wonderful ideas that have just been mentioned in their piece of work from the incredible education that the IB is providing and the key ingredients for creating well leaders many of whom are also part of the SDSM and global schools but really try and fill those gaps as a as a collaborative community on this specific issue and really put 4.7 on the map and I think that has really come to life and there is a there's a big learning curve and the theory of change will evolve as we learn more and more but I think the excitement here is that there is now a dedicated space where together with our wonderful partners we can accelerate and advance ESD around the world. Wonderful we have received a glimpse into the theory of change there were lots of questions about youth involvement so I do want to ask who volunteers to comment on youth involvement in policymaking many claim it's just a tokenization yeah someone of the panelist can I interrupt please please go ahead keep it succinct because we only have six minutes left so one minute answer very brief so how how youth are involved in policymaking I will just give you an example a concrete example from an Akhawyn University where we have a club called the Moroccan Political Club and this is the young leaders at the university level they have met you know that Morocco lately if you know those of you are following the development in Morocco is under the leadership of His Majesty the King Mohammed VI has appointed the committee that they're working on the new model new model of development and that committee was appointed by King Mohammed VI and they came to IUI and they met with this young leader which was the political economic the Moroccan Political Club and they have debated the issues that have to do with with the young and how their voice should be heard so that's the highest if you want that's the highest representativity in terms how how youth have been involved from that single aspect where they're given the floor to speak and to think in two days about presenting what they think a new model of of development should be for Morocco they have invited experts and they have done workshop and they have presented their new model of education to that committee that was appointed by the King Mohammed VI wonderful good example maybe Mustafa it's Turk you also want to comment on youth involvement in the case of Turkey to be honest in in the case of Turkey youth involvement is only common in action not in policy okay yeah in action I mean we have really good youth advocates for sustainability and other issues environmental issues other human rights gender issues they're really really active on they have a digital lobby let's say and they have doing this advocacy a lot in Turkey but unfortunately at policy level they are not that much represented I can say okay for ESD and global citizenship education I can say that not maybe in K to 12 level but in higher education level in tertiary at tertiary level Turkish young people are really really active in these issues and we have youth hubs we have you know SDS in Turkey and we have different societies in each university so at university level they are really doing well I can't say that it illustrates exactly what was mentioned that there is a need a dire need for more youth involvement in policy making definitely let me turn to like this is my my leadership leadership segue for Siva Kumari Dr Kumari leaders are made at IB tell us what are the what are the secret ingredients are there any secrets I'll do that in one minute or less Monica the so I think what we advocate for is that intellect education and high standards are very very important to us and should be to the world as well but what you do as a human you know for for the common good we believe is equally important so academic standards and engagement of the heart as Andreas kind of put it earlier discovering your agency habitually from age three until nineteen that you as an individual can make change change takes effort it takes patience it takes all kinds of things and making that a part of the curriculum for us is an important seat to so in education and I do not think we should underestimate the power of the youth in making change and we as educators need to support that and give it equal importance so there's my short answer brilliant we have one minute left and I would love to still do the lightning round but I have to limit all the speakers to really one sentence what is the one headline that you want the audience to take away from this session and I'll start with Amanda because Amanda you didn't have the floor another time Amanda please tell us your one sentence yes I just want to say quickly that as far as the role of youth you know global schools started as a network of young people and it has been instrumental in pushing mission 4.7 and sds and youth has also had a role in mission 4.7 not only from the secretariat but also with the support of other youth voices and volunteers so for my one sentence I will say that youth engagement starts here with us at the Vatican youth symposium so use this as a space to network and and take these policy um agendas forward wonderful professor it's Duke the second sentence for you what does the audience take away okay I will talk about educational point again I will just revise I mean I will just repeat what I have said before we need to activate systemic continues in a way to adaptable and transformative learning methods in education especially in cater to both levels brilliant succinct professor Marzuc what is your sentence that we take away um my sentence of take away I would just say if you support the sdgs you will explore a new way of learning very memorable wonderful then the one sentence dear dr Kumari what would it be um I think there's so many goals so pick a goal and think every day of what you're doing towards that goal nice and then Sam the not last word but now for this session last word to you what is the one sentence yeah my one sentence is uh if you give young people the tools uh the platform the training and the networks that they need they will surprise you and we've seen it over and over again at sdgs youth and also hopefully through global schools and I think that's exactly what we want to do in spite of the next generation of young leaders through global schools and then mission 4.7 brilliant thank you so much it's been fascinating I don't want to thank all the speakers and panelists and the audience we will I think have a short one minute break before we go to the next session which will be chaired by Chandrika Bahadur director of sdg academy and sdgs it will be our session the third session on education for sustainable development in tertiary and professional settings thank you very much thank you Monica what a wonderful session we had inspiring speakers and such a wealth of information um Sam are we taking a break or should we dive straight in perhaps 30 seconds and then we're going all right may I ask all the speakers of session three to please be ready and I will unmute you but you can also unmute yourselves all right let us begin um welcome to session three of the launch of mission 4.7 here at the Vatican Newt symposium one of the most interesting things about sdg 4 is that it makes reference to lifelong learning for all and what that means is that it recognizes that not only is education important for young people but it's actually important for people throughout their lives and that learning does not stop when we step out of our educational institutions so for this purpose we have now we're now going to shift attention to higher and continuing education and the role that it'll play in the achievement of sdg 4.7 I'm Chandrika Bahadur I direct the sdg academy where we create and curate content on sustainable development um I would invite all of you to look at the materials that we've created we've had a history now of six years of not just creating the material but working with universities to have them be used as part of teaching on education at teaching and learning for sustainable development I'm also honored to chair the secretariat of mission 4.7 and I look forward to working with all of you as we move forward before we begin a few housekeeping points please remember that this event is live on youtube please do keep your microphones off unless the moderators unmute them please try and keep your cameras on it's lovely to see all of you unless of course bandwidth issues intervene do tell us your thoughts through the chat function it's important not just for asking questions but also to hear your comments and your thoughts which will all help as we design 4.7 when we move forward remember that there is simultaneous translation so please pick the language of your choice from the bottom right hand button when you do ask your questions if you have questions for the panel please specify who you want the question to go to and please tell us where you're from we are delighted that we have been joined by people from so many parts of the world and please remember we are on social media the hashtags are in the chat function I'd request the organizers to put them in again spread the word we need as many people as possible to join our mission so with that let's delve right in we have a stellar group of speakers today and I'm so pleased that we are kicking off with someone I personally deeply admire and respect we're delighted to welcome Miss Irina Bokova a two-time former director general of UNESCO and a world leader in education Irina we're delighted you're going to be making opening remarks for the session and I give you the floor thank you very much Chandrika for this opportunity and my congratulations to the co-organizers UNESCO the Ban Ki-moon Center and the Pontifical Academy the SDSN network with all of these institutions I'm somehow linked and it's a very rewarding for me experience to be here I would like to say that it's so wonderful to see a concept an idea that we launched before the Rio plus 20 conference that nowadays are blossomed and was of course incorporated in the goal number four and mission 4.7 and let me just say I like very much the word mission we in our bureaucratic language in the United Nations we were saying target I think mission indeed is the right word to name it because this captures all the meaning of why education should be at the heart of the sustainable development agenda I would like just to make three points as an introduction the first I believe now in the COVID-19 the pandemic when we have seen indeed the devastating impact on education and education being both I would say at the same time a goal in itself and means to achieve the other goals on the sustainable development agenda we have to reconfirm our commitment to the goal number four and to look once again to revisit the targets we know that it's an aspirational between really need to look at the targets and how to implement how to achieve them it is important because it relates to everything that is at stake today about the climate change while the job opportunities about the fighting inequalities about health of course about gender equality and and I could pass on and of course we have seen the positive for impact of technology and the digital and definitely the future will be digital the opportunities are incredibly enormous but if we don't look at the bottlenecks at the gaps that still exist in the digital I don't think we will give justice to education there's a social mobility tool as education inclusiveness and also into the aspect of lifelong learning something that you yourself just just mentioned we should not forget that in order to bridge this inequalities everyone has to get an access to good digital platforms to good quality and and fast broadband and unfortunately half of humanity does not have actually access to this on the other side of course we have to look at the innovation and everything that the the digital may bring to education and my third point of course which is very much the now the debate it is about the tertiary education and if I look at the goal number four and just a little bit of history there are many firsts in the goal number four it was about the holistic approach to education all the levels of education which are important we speak about tertiary but without a very sound primary and secondary I think there will be also problems with the tertiary there is for the first time the target of financing of education something that right now also needs to be very much reminded again because I have looked for some some figures recently about all the packages that are given for overcoming the crisis and it seems only one percent of all these big packages go to education so definitely there is a gap that need to be bridged if we want really education to serve the goal of being at the heart of the sustainable development agenda now if I go specifically to the tertiary education and the lifelong learning and I think you did mention also and I would like to comment the sustainable development solutions network that has been so active from all these last years since inception and I was at the very first meeting in New York and I have seen the incredible impact already going global and it has and the contribution the last very important publication the guide the guide that you have published on accelerating education for the SDGs in universities is really something a very important publication that I would strongly recommend to everybody to take on board it speaks about how to support students and learners and how to develop the necessary skills the knowledge and the mindset something that we discussed here today I would like to say that when we speak about the high education I would also wait here science because high education in science are very closely linked and they are really the real drivers of transformation I think it is very important also to mention that the complexity of our world needs indeed a different approach of university city this kind of intersectoral approach this the bridge between the natural the social sciences because if we speak nowadays and many speaks about the fusion of technologies that are blurring the lines between the physical the digital the biological sphere there indeed is a increasing need for higher education to search for these responses both from the point of view of their positive economic social and environmental impact but I would like to say also of the human impact because the all the successful education strategies nowadays I think should include in a very equal measure the deep consideration of the human the ways in which this technology and shifting economic power impacts people in all the different levels and the threats indeed that exist within the world that is interconnected and is somewhat as we say under pressure and this is once again where I believe education for sustainable development education for global citizenship comes into the picture and and something that when we were adopting and formulating all number four we were thinking something is missing if agenda 2030 is for the people about the people leaving no one behind in all these diversity humanity we really have to embrace this and to put this strong notion about intercultural competencies about empathy about solidarity about understanding the others something that nowadays in the post-covid world will be probably some of the most important lessons to learn about all of us and and I'm finished with this I would really strongly like to congratulate his holiness Pope Francis for his last in Ciclica tutti fratelli I remember because I'm also a member of a high committee on human fraternity that his holiness created with the Grand Imam of the al-Azhar University in Cairo when they signed two years ago a historic document on human fraternity and I think this is the way to implement further on the right approach the right mindset in order to embrace values that are critical for all of us and thank you once again for this opportunity thank you Rina what a wonderful way to start us off and thank you for outlining you're some of the themes that we will come back to in the session particularly around the issue of access to technology and intersectorality of the of education at the higher education level but also the values the global values that we would like to see young people in vibe and the role that universities have to play let me ask you just one question before we get onto the panel and that in in your work what are some of the best examples that you have seen of institutions of higher education actually promoting global citizenship and values of sustainable development well you know there are many many institutions and you can imagine I have traveled and talked to many ministers and I'm I'm very happy that of course UNESCO now continues in the continuity this very strong driving leadership in this area I think it's wonderful because this this is what UNESCO contributes to the world I would like to come back to what the former Secretary General of the United Nations Mr. Ban Ki-moon and I'm sitting also on the board of the Ban Ki-moon Center and we worked with him already in 2012-2013 for the Global Education First Initiative and I would mention that the Republic of Korea is one of the champions has been our many debates and discussions actually the go number four was adopted in Incheon in the major conference in 2015 and before that it was preceded by many brainstorming and discussions on the global education and it was once again Korea that was the champion of this with of course the then Secretary General Ban Ki-moon but I think it was embraced by the Korean society and nowadays many universities have integrated it in their programs there is under the auspices of UNESCO and Asia Pacific Center for an education for international understanding that prepares curricular for global citizenship education there is a wonderful institute Mahatma Gandhi Institute in Delhi also that we created during during my tenure and I have visited many times they are working strongly once again in this concept of global cities and how we embrace all these values so and of course I would say and I congratulate you with the Academy I think the SDSN is doing marvelous work nowadays all over the world and it is so rewarding to see that it really starts to be embedded in high education in education systems congratulations indeed thank you Rina thank you so much let us now turn to our wonderful panel we are going to organize this session a little bit differently so what we'll do is I'll introduce you to the panel and then we'll we'll post questions which where we'll invite responses from the panelists and move across three broad themes which I'll introduce in just a moment so first let me introduce you to our panel we are joined by Teresa Young dynamic youth leader she's project lead of SDSN youth and a recent graduate from the London School of Economics and Political Science welcome Teresa we also have Noha Khalki program director of the Millennium Campus Network a group that many of you are familiar with that's working to promote sustainable development on university campuses we're very honored to be joined by Professor Fernando Rimas who really doesn't need much of an introduction is the Ford Foundation Professor of Practice in International Education and director of the Global Education Initiative Initiative Innovation Initiative I beg your pardon and of the International Education Policy Program at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University we are also joined by Dr Pezi Ogbigwe who's the director of Rivers State University of Science and Technology Advancement in Nigeria she's also served as head of environmental education and training of the United Nations environment and was UNEP's lead focal point for the UN decade of education for sustainable development so there's a lot of wisdom that she has to share with us we also have Professor Jose Maria del Corral who is the president of the Foundation School of Corrantes he has spent 20 years is working as the president of the Education Council of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires and we're delighted to have him here this is our wonderful panel and then we will have a closing statement by Professor Stefano Zamagni who is professor of economics at the University of Belongna so thank you very much to the panel for being here and I want to start us off by posing a question that picks up on a point that Irina made towards the end of her intervention which is that through our university systems are we really preparing young adults in values of global citizenship if we are what are the examples of the success and if we are not where do we see the greatest challenges and a related question to that is that what are these values that you see as important and do you see universities consider these values as critical and important in their role as shapers of young adults so maybe I will start with Professor Jose if you're here and if you can talk to us a little bit about the values that you see as being critical Professor who can we have him unmuted is he here yeah there you are Professor Jose Maria del Corral the floor is yours yes well thank you very much for me it is a pleasure to be able to share with so many young people from diverse places of diverse stories thank you very much also dear Jeffrey Stefano and my very dear teacher Marcelo Sánchezolondo and all the team at the academy of sciences that have been doing for so long for making reality and turning these words into concrete gestures also of course to stefania and to all the UNESCO team and to all my teachers colleagues a little while ago we saw Pope Francis speaking that the educational pact was broken you know what I said in 1997 there is also an Argentine program that says it is more worth telling you than ever that is why I celebrate that we are here today after 27 years the educational pact as the Pope says it is not broken by the covid the covid showed our reality we saw the public health broken and the lack of public policy but we did not see the broken schools we did not see the broken banks the broken curriculum the broken teaching formation what we would give the teachers that we have passion and vocation despite the implanted educational system who are the young people who are fixed it is more we say they are the future why because they do not exist precisely that is why we say they are the future because if we believe in the young people we would say as today the Pope says that they are the present because the future does not exist we have the here and the now or they are here and they are now or they are not in Argentina we say we have to get our faces out and the Pope called on us in 1997 to redo that educational pact as Mr. Sáñez said a little while ago in the Catholic education program at that time it was called Occurrent schools this revolutionary group was called a neighbor school an old man a little attractive maybe but what did we do together public and private colleges of different neighborhoods of the city of Buenos Aires and then of the country so that the guys armed a room without walls because we put the guys on four walls and the more similar they are, the better until we put a uniform in particular, some with green tie, others with gray shirts, they were Catholic kings or of each religion or public kings, but they were never found and we wish on the other hand that we had to respect the diversity that it was important that they worked together, we took them to the helicopter from the closed neighborhoods where we live to the closed neighborhoods where they study, that's why Jorge Bergoglio saw this reality and the crisis that my country, Argentina, and that Mr. Sánchez Londo knows well, in fact, the corralito that breaks the financial system corralito so that no one escapes neither the money nor the people nor the mind nor the thought said I come and I need you to recover in the educational pact broken in my country and that's why we put the neighbor school to gather children of different economic levels and of different religions doing an experience of a week where they raised their real problems, the drug, the death, the suicide, the rape, the real things that happened to them and you know that they did not stay in a simple denunciation or in words, they were looking for concrete solutions, there the educational city law was born, 2,169, there the law was born against the addictions, there the laws were born because the girls suffered because they were going to buy fashion clothes and as they had theoretically a few kilos of mass they did not get a fashion pants, a fashion shirt and that was not an end, it brought death, illness, bulimia, anorexia, the same with the law of bulim that we could implement in many countries in Latin America, that's why when Jorge Bergoglio comes to the Pope, he does not take a group of Argentine friends, he takes what he had discovered as a pastor and as a leader in Argentina and thanks to the collaboration of the Academy of Sciences and Mr. Sánchez Zorondo, not of all, this madness that was born with Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, on August 13, 2013, at 3 o'clock it is announced and the Pope announces it by delivering the first oligo that occurs in schools, a few months later the Pope sends me to talk to Banquimund, which I like to hear again and I tell him in a private meeting that schools were born now in the world so that young people are the ones who change in education, he laughs and tells me he loves the figure of Pope Francisco and what you are telling me here has a lot to do with what I heard from him there, what I did not think is that I was not only going to say it, but that I had already started to do it, I remember his words that Banquimund gave in the first meeting that he makes schools at the Academy of Sciences in the same year that the Pope creates in 2013, we do not invite educators, we invite Mr. Google, Mr. Facebook, young Twitter, Global, Oracle, all at the Academy of Sciences and we told him we needed him to help us build a class without walls and they looked at us with a strange face 2013 Academy of Sciences and they know that the first and main problem that came out was the lack of connectivity and we signed a agreement for that and we signed an agreement with the organism that brings together all telecommunications at an international level to ask for connectivity as a human right as if it were the right to water that the pives can communicate that they can be connected but I am saying it many years before Covid-19 came, that's why I had Covid-19 and many have died of Covid-19 in honor of those deaths, please, let's not wait so many years more to do it, that there are no words, as the Pope Francis says, what I like about schools is that it is concrete and it is more he says something if it is not catholic he says if it is not concrete it is not catholic at all schools do not look for a religious confession schools do not look for mathematical teaching, language, history, geography schools can be universal being so local because the only thing that generates is that young people can think about what really happens to them and that diversity is found, as young people were found, Palestinians, Israelis, and Jerusalem when we did the experience of schools or when the boys from Mexico and the United States were found despite the wall that we continue to build the adults and that, thank God, the young people up there every day Fratelli Tutti told me the Pope a few days ago when I was not able to read the encyclical it is possible to change the education and the schools that we have but let's not please because we continue to build and inaugurate and believe in our consciousness so schools will exist until the educational pact is implemented until the last place in the world and the last young thank you very much wonderful thank you professor and we will come with a wonderful inspiration and example for us all let me turn maybe now to professor Rimas especially also following from professor Koral's speech you have been it's such a pleasure to be part of this convening I think the 10, 100, 10,000 this is a challenge of 7.6 billion humans of those 1.3 are students at all levels if we could mobilize all students so that they each one of them educated for adults we would solve this problem so how do we mobilize 1.3 billion students of of them 200 million are university students which means if each university student engaged with 6.5 students at the pre-university level we would solve this problem and I think that's what universities need to do teach students to stop contemplating the problem and doing something about it and that's what I've been trying to do let me give you an example I've developed a methodology to engage university students in partnering with elementary schools and with non-formal education institutions in developing contextually situated curriculum about climate change we will not solve the problem of climate change with the universal curriculum for the world because the impact of climate change is different in Guatemala in Haiti in Sindh Pakistan or in the United States in order for a curriculum to be empowering to empower people to understand mitigate adapt and revert climate change it has to build the capacities that people need in those contexts and that is a challenge that schools by themselves are unable to do the teachers do not have the necessary knowledge to do that in this book I reviewed most of the existing climate change curriculum and they're all about teaching the facts of climate change the science of climate change that is as if we believe that we're going to achieve the SDGs by teaching students the meaning of each of these icons this is the lowest possible way in a blooms taxonomy of knowledge that will produce no change in the world we don't produce a world without poverty because people can regurgitate and say SDG number one is a world without poverty we don't produce a world without poverty even if people understand why it would be good to have a world without poverty we produce a world without poverty we can when we can identify what are the capacities what is the knowledge the dispositions and the skills that people need poor and non-poor alike to build a world without poverty and that task is the task that most of the 80 million teachers around the world by themselves cannot do but if we can connect to universities and elementary and secondary schools we can do this one of the great innovations of the last five decades has been the explosion of higher education there are 28 000 universities around the world and if we could engage these universities so that university students engage with elementary and secondary schools in partnership in developing a curriculum that makes sense for that place not to get people to say we should address climate change not to get people to recognize these goals but to identify the human capacities that people need to gain to mitigate adapt and revert climate change and this book which I have placed on the link is an example of how to do that there are now several universities around the world adopting this method which is simple it can be scaled because it doesn't involve creating new courses it involves getting university faculty members to integrate in their courses opportunities for their students to develop partnerships with elementary and secondary school teachers developing curriculum that works and I think if we do that we succeed at helping students learn the skills they need the best way to learn something is to teach it or to partner with someone in teaching them when my students partner with teachers developing a curriculum to help for example students in Guatemala learn to mitigate adapt and revert climate change they truly understand what climate change is and what needs to happen to change it they have learned it from the teachers and from the students they have served so this is what I have done over the last several years with my students producing curriculum like this curriculum which is now being taught in many schools around the world this was done with a team of graduate students and it's an example of the enormous potential of students at the university level to be of service to those who are not in the university same thing with this curriculum so to sum up I think that universities are extremely cosmopolitan institutions of all the educational institutions we have they are perhaps the one that best prepare people to understand the SDGs but universities serve a very small percentage of the world population 200 million people of the 7.6 billion humans are enrolled in universities even relative to students we have 200 million university students relative to 1.3 billion students in elementary and secondary most of whom will never go to university so if universities are going to educate students to achieve the SDGs the first thing they need to teach them is that these is about joining with others who are not members of the university community that achieving the SDGs is not about contemplating the problem it's not even about educating members of the university community to understand it it's about joining in solidarity with those who are not in the university uneducated adults the people who are served by non-formal education centers the people who are served by elementary schools and secondary schools and jointly developed curriculum that builds the capacities to teach these and I think that for the most part universities are doing that university over the last 10 months I have been studying how universities around the world have partnered with elementary and secondary schools to support them in sustaining educational opportunity during this global calamity of COVID and universities most of them already understand that the best way we educate our students to improve the world is by engaging them in the task of improving in the task of improving it universities are doing this already I think we just need to be a little bit more systematic in codifying what is done and in transferring very quickly simple methodologies that can be scaled that's all I wanted to say and I have placed on the on the link a few resources which are open education resources all of them developed with my graduate students wonderful thank you Professor Reemers excellent and you can see in the chat function what you've said is resonated very deeply with our audience here let me now turn to Teresa Yang Teresa you are one of the students that Professor Reemers is referring to a recent graduate you've been working both with STSN as well as working as a student tell us a little bit from your perspective our university is really doing enough what more can they do and what more can young people in universities do to achieve mission 4.7 yes of course great honor to be here with all these distinguished speakers there are a few things I'd like to share from my work at the STG students program about this particular issue the first one I think is about how the challenge is mostly shifting the way we're looking at education not in something that needs to be focused on the curriculum for how are we integrating sustainable development but in supporting education beyond the campus I want to stress this to all the people who are listening to this and also to all other from panelists that the STGs is not something that needs to be taught and taught only it is something that needs to be enabled and it's a way of doing what I've seen from the entire network that of students leaders and also enthusiastic students who are hoping to make a change in the world is that if we want them to become critically needed change makers in all contexts big and small they have to stop becoming simply passive consumers on content but creating interesting projects out in the world in their local communities to actually nail that in terms of how they are supposed to be that change maker in their local communities I like to give a few different examples for how action has been supplementing tertiary education and a few different universities that we're operating in just to showcase how that part is one of the most important parts in my opinion for what sustainable development needs to look like in education for example when one of our one of our university hubs in Uganda for example very unfortunately during COVID the COVID pandemic had one of their major administrative buildings burnt down what they told me was in response to this we're learning a lot about you know fire drills and different sort of safety systems I'm going to go together with my help and start designing things that are going to be donated to the university campus to help them recover from the fire this is what we mean when we say sustainable development isn't something to be taught it's something that needs to be enabled it's something to be done another thing I like to see I've seen in the past month is that some of our fellows and also our coordinators in New Delhi have decided that after COVID they will come together with a plan to collect the voices of children and women in slums to come up with policy suggestions for how they can better recover from the pandemic again this is something that they've decided to do going beyond their campus but this all happened because the university has become a ground for them to achieve such collaboration and also to turn that knowledge into action it's a great way for them to meet other people who are also interested in very similar things but that knowledge in itself for how do we create safe systems or how do we collect information and do policy making that needs to go beyond learning into translating into community that's the first thing I want to say in terms of the challenges in our current education system not just on curriculum it has to be action-based second thing also echoing on what's been said before on a digital divide I'm sure that a lot of participants I see here on the zoom call might be paying for us to enter this call and the reason for this is because a lot of the data that's necessary for them to access information and online webinars or education needs to be paid in a very high amount of cost in their local communities and giving the digital divide and the inconsistency of university education under COVID-19 sustainable development needs to be something that has to be structurally supported to make sure that no one gets left behind during the COVID-19 pandemic and we'll see this for example in the case of some countries and universities offering data subsidies and reimbursements for students and go into online education but how are we translating that into more general accessibility programs so that all countries and also all students who are being left behind due to the lack of infrastructure can be made sure to be part of that recovery and also keep on their learning during COVID-19 last but not least I think I like to touch upon the idea of what university is for I come from London School of Economics and from the home city of Dan's from in Hong Kong career is one of the top things that students are thinking about how exactly is sustainable development being incorporated into this core stress that they have in terms of for example what am I going to do after university I want to go into this hub and learn about sustainable development but I've also got schoolwork and I think schoolwork is going to be more important for me if I want to get a job how are we incorporating what we think is important for society and to what society is telling them to be important there are a few things I'd like to say for example I remember when we were recruiting a coordinator so these are university students that are setting student organizations at different universities to teach them what sustainable development all of them told me that I am here for one reason and one reason only that is I see my peers dropping out of school because of unemployment at home they don't have the money therefore they're dropping out of school and I want to make sure that what we're doing here at school it's not just making sure that they're being fed content to go into the next stage of their life but that it's being useful so that they can for example earn extra part-time jobs uh income so that they can stay in school so when we're talking about sustainable development we need to find a way to make sure it's not something that's seen as an extra curricular to be competing with the school curriculum but incorporate it into what's necessary in a school curriculum in our program we see that one thing we've done very well is creating some sort of certification or proof to celebrate their learnings and action in sustainable development and we've partnered with the Ban Ki Moon Global Citizenship Center that and also with with SDSN and also SD Academy where Chandrika is working in so that all students are going through action components and also learning about sustainable development gets a certificate to prove that they've done this sadly in this world we don't have enough incentive systems for that yet so looking forward I'd be willing and happy to hear what our different panelists are thinking about the specific issue great thank you Teresa lots of food for thought and really interesting to see you bring up the issue of careers because of course that is a central concern of young people and so maybe let me turn to Professor Bigway you are leading a formal educational institution can you describe a little bit about how you're addressing sustainable development particularly in the context of the kind of concerns that Teresa has raised the floor is yours you're on mute so yes can you hear me now yes perfectly thank you very much Chandrika and I would like to say thank you to the organizers now in my institution what we have been doing we have seen that um just designing or developing special courses do not really solve the problem because when you design a special specific program for instance on good citizenship and its times alone the students would later on have the problem of applying it to their courses and applying it when they get to the real world so the best method that I have used and that I have seen that works is when integration is seen as a reflection of the content of what the teachers must teach and the pedagogy they implement so being a good citizen a global citizen being a person of value being a person who cares about orders who empathizes with orders should not be distinct from what the teacher is teaching it should be included in the particular course and in the way the teacher is teaching that particular course so it is not about um introducing new curriculum but it is about reflecting these global values of respect for nature of universal human rights of economic justice and a culture of peace in the various disciplines and also in this course and I know that what this then means the challenge that we have is that that we find that the teacher or the lecturer in as in the case with university plays a very critical role is he prepared for this approach to study is he prepared to revise you know his uh all curriculum you know with this in mind so it is critical also for the lecturer and the teachers to be exposed to continuous professional education continuous discourse on this on this issue just like I think it was Fridge of Capra who cancelled that academics most care not just about the next graduation but about the next generation so it's not just about graduating doctors and scientists you know like we saw during the COVID we saw scientists we saw science in action technology in action without equity we still saw poverty we still saw uh things that should not be there we didn't see empathy in in some cases but then we need to groom scientists with a heart we need to groom technologies you know with empathy with with the knowledge of equity with who can be fair in the way they practice their their disciplines so I think we are living in unique times that demand unique contributions from unique teachers thank you wonderful and what a great message to to end the panel discussion on I'm going to do a quick review of the questions as you can see the chat box has been extremely extremely active I think there are a couple of things that have come out one is the question of coming in from Kazakhstan asking about how how what measures can we take especially after COVID-19 to promote sustainable development goals through education so that's one and I know several of the speakers have touched on it but just for you to consider when we do closing statements and then the second question that came with that I wanted to highlight was the role of conflict and the role of trying to achieve the SDGs through a focus on peace building and again the role that universities can play in that and then there was a question around diversity which is I think more a question to the organizers here of diversity in mission 4.7 in terms of reflecting individuals from different groups that to get a different viewpoint and experience into the deliberations that we have here so with that let me just ask for each of you and sorry I'm oh I'm so sorry we still have one speaker I'm so sorry Noha I completely I had you on my list I do have a question for you so let's turn to Noha first Noha you are working with young people around universities around the world based on what Teresa has said and based on what some of the other panelists us have said what is your perspective on what young people should be doing or what they need or what they're asking for in terms of sustainable development the floor is yours. Sure thank you so much and Norris it's it's a great honor to be here with you today at the Vatican East Symposium I just want to start by one thanking Dr. Jeffrey Sachs for inviting me and also to thank everybody at SDSN and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences for bringing us all together to learn and reflect from each other thank you for all the amazing panelists and for the insight that you shared so yes my name is Noha I serve as the programs director at Millennium Campus Network MCN we're a global nonprofit based in Boston that work to support undergraduate student leaders own their power for social impact on campus and their communities and since we've been around we've supported over 8 000 other undergraduate student leaders committed to social impact from over 400 universities around the globe we do this through our signature program the Millennium Fellowship which is presented in partnership with the United Nations Academic Impact and through that we've made it our mission to support students in creating a platform where they can learn about the various ways they can advance the sustainable development goals and learn about social impact the fellows receive trainings connections and credentials as they work on a specific and a concrete initiative that advances at least one of the SDGs this creates an experiential learning opportunity for them throughout the semester that they're engaged um so this year we had 15 000 young leaders apply for the Millennium Fellowship from around the world and 1400 campuses and despite the challenges that I know had brought on all of us we just celebrated the resilient class of 2020 with 1000 Millennium Fellows in 80 campuses across 20 countries around the world and if I could just spotlight three fellows that have stood out to us and have taken action over the past year working on causes that they truly care about we have Kaiser Kabue from Kenyatta University in Kenya who realized the urgency that the pandemic has brought on all of us and decided that as a young person he needs to take action he utilized his technical skills in artificial intelligence and in machine learning to develop an application that can provide early diagnosis of COVID-19 through measurement of vital signs Sadie Testaseka from Florida International University in Bayonetta States created a curriculum that supports fifth grade students and teaches them about human rights and she's impacted 250 people in her local community through her work we also have fellows in India with Ganesh Dalip and five Millennium Fellows at IIT Madras who have joined forces together to create India's first university-based study center for the climate change to provide overarching frameworks for facilitating interdisciplinary research collaboration and funding for the field of climate action these are just three of 754 Millennium Fellows and projects that are tackling all 17 SDGs locally on the campus this year the fellows are guided by three main values that they hear and preach through the work that they do and that's empathy similar to what my panelists have just shared humility and inclusion they take these guiding values through the work as they tackle complex issues from looking at the impact of the pandemic and what it has had on their communities to addressing issues on climate action to fighting racial inequalities together we look at the impact that young people have made this year through our small community and it's they've dedicated over 206,000 hours and impacted the lives of over two million people this year so you can read more about our work at MillenniumFallows.org but as I reflect on what our small community has been able to accomplish I think about all of the potential that young people around the world have created and all of the potential that is still untapped there is so much more that we can do as organizations that work hand in hand with universities as we continue to invest in young people invest in their power invest in their passion and motivation to create change so I think as I wrap up I just want to say you know it's really up to us to find more innovative ways of one collaboration both as universities and nonprofits and across sectors to make sure that young people have the values and the competencies and resources to be global citizens and work on sustainable futures and achieving the SDGs it's been an honor joining you today thank you so much and I look forward to engaging with the speakers of the Q&A session thank you know Howard wonderful examples and it's really inspiring and I think what you're doing is giving us examples of the theme that you know has been a kind of a recurrence theme in the panel which is the power of young people to actually achieve the goals and both through education but also through solutions wonderful to hear let me turn now to professor Stefano Zamagni to give us a closing statement for the session and then what we will try and fit in if we can is the lightning round of the one sentence you want to leave the audience with which I think is a nice way to end in the day professor Zamagni the floor is yours thank you so much I'm very happy to participate to this gathering and let me congratulate for the terrific organization of this youth symposium now let me start from this consideration education is a human right which makes it a moral responsibility as well as societal responsibility as Pope Francis put say that it is a summons of two solidarity with the current and future generation we all know the content of goal number four of SDG and we have to conclude that there is nothing more essential to the sustainable development agenda than access to education for all all over the world now we have to admit that we need to update the education system intervening both on its contents and on its organizational setup as far as the content is concerned it seems to me that the new education has to favor the development of the right skills and attitudes including about all critical thinking creativity and imagination which are in particular in this historical period very important students in higher education must evolve to become lifelong learners and this we know is technically feasible not only is education failing to encompass issues like climate change social exclusion new forms of slavery of course there are important exceptions we have to admit but we have to admit that there is a the general mood it is also silent education when it comes to the ethical dimension time has come to recognize that the utilitarian ethical framework is not a proper guide for a new educational profile i would favor a move to virtue ethics along the neo-aristotelian lines now as far as the organizational setup of educational system is concerned we need to recognize the Tayloristic model of organization is not at all adequate Taylorism this entered into factories but then he moved into schools and the university as we know from history if we want to meet the challenges of a new education it is not only a matter of moving from vertical to horizontal teaching methods what is required is an organizational model capable of keeping together three basic elements knowledge skills and character indeed one thing to do the right thing is something different from knowing the right thing to do and that in turn is something other than actually doing the right thing the point is that knowing in other words thinking does not necessarily result into doing in other words changing behavior now how to put the concept into action it seems to me that connection is the answer the notion of connection appears already in the writings of Aristotel 2400 years ago but in the last couple of centuries it has been abandoned in educational practices connection conceived as the desire to learn desire to learn connects cognitions and emotions to actions that is why educators must foster the learners connection in other words they desire to learn now a final point because my time is limited as the same as a federal refers to the world of general companies corporation and that is an argument which is in a sense a symmetrical to the one developed by Fernando who referred specifically to universities companies need to embrace a sense of purpose beyond making only only profits they have to consider the well-being of all their stakeholders investors need to focus on the long term and to consider explicitly the social and environmental impact of their investments civil society organizations need to work together to address global changes through community organization practices now today a light net business leaders are understanding that focusing on maximizing shareholder value has no future the tendency is to move towards the so-called total impact according to which companies as cognitive institutions are considering the impact of their activities on the social and environmental dimension as well as on the economic one any practical implication of this approach is that the companies have to modify their approach they should move from corporate training to corporate education we cannot accept that company should not be interested in evolving education most companies limit internal and external learning to contents that provide knowledge and skills needed to perform specific tasks that allow employees to work with optimal effectiveness and efficiency in different areas of the corporate core competence but although this is useful and nobody would object to that it seems to me that corporation should move towards a corporate education which goes behind corporate training by adding dimensions that deal with the doing the right things instead of only doing things right the purpose in other words is to stimulate a normative reflection to challenge intellectual reaction with regard to dial and mass occurring in the real world and to put the daily business activities in perspective to a greater purpose now it seems to me to conclude that is very important because otherwise unless we establish a bridge between schools and the university and the let's say a company's world it would be very difficult that we will be able to achieve the goals that we were talking about in this symposium and in particular obtaining the desired results of our effort thank you very much for your attention thank you so much professors and I think you really summarized wonderfully what some of the points that both were made but also brought in the issue of the role and responsibility of corporations for a more holistic education so thank you for that we're at the end of our session I'm going to turn to our panelists and ask you one sentence only what would you like to leave the audience with know how I don't we start with you thank you I think one sentence I would just say as we approach the new year of 2021 I hope we can all just rethink how we can do good for our world and and just renew the commitments to social impact and sustainable development excellent professor Jose can we have your one sentence please yes professor okay I think there are some technical issues here uh so let's move on while we sort that out uh professor Obigwe can we have your one sentence yes I've just to say that um universities do not they are not standalone and in my country for country for instance sustainability must address local concerns of impurity good governance justice equity otherwise the good work that universities are doing will be a marriage we need to connect these dots universities most connect to business to governments thank you wonderful professor Rimas look I think we we have a big challenge uh the path that we're on is not sustainable we're burning the planet you you look at what we're doing in schools is not very effective 30 percent of the students in PSA say their life has no meaning has no purpose even when we try to teach about SDG it doesn't work I review here evidence on the effectiveness of climate change curriculum and when you only teach students the science the facts it leaves them hopeless it gives them they cannot they cannot do anything about it it's only when you combine as professor as professor Zamanie was saying when you combine knowledge and deep understanding of the facts with hope that people actually become engaged and hope comes from engaging in activities that show them that they can do something about it now the question then is how do we tackle this complex challenge which is complex for the reasons professor Zamanie has explained well and because of the scale 1.3 billion people we begin somewhere let me give you an example of how breaking a complex problem into simple steps can help we have 28 000 universities in the world suppose only 10 percent decided today that we're going to have one professor work with five students as I did here developing curriculum for schools that would produce in one year 14 000 specific curriculum resources to help schools teach about climate change which is more than the entire un system has produced in its entire history to support teachers to do that so I think the thing to do about this problem is stop contemplating it and just start leading by example do something because in the action is the path to hope which is what we need to become engaged stop contemplating the problem because contemplation alone leads to paralysis thank you excellent professor Zamanie any final words from you I totally agree with Fernando that is why I like the word connection connection means knowledge jointly to action so far we have kept the two elements separated but that was not at the beginning that is why I mentioned Aristotle we have to put knowledge at the service of action and action should presuppose that knowledge that is why we need the cooperative strategy with the world of business because otherwise our people when they get out of the university unless they found a place a working place where let's say the CEO it's already acquainted with these ideas he or she will be frustrated and I think that Fernando is right university should open these bridges with the world of companies and in more general institutions excellent thank you again if professor Jose can hear us and if we can hear him would you have a final thought to leave with the audience and let's give the final word to our youth representative Teresa what do you want to leave the audience with my one sentence would be I implore you to think about what your role is in leaving no one behind that is the high level panelist about what are we doing about data and accessibility and for your university students what am I doing for marginalized students communities around my campus that do not have the privilege I have thank you very much what a wonderful note to end on so thank you very much I know we have breakout sessions that are going to happen now so I want to conclude by saying that I think there are a few themes that really stood out in today's session the first was the need to use and to create an environment where university students are actually doing much more than just learning but they're actually going out and teaching and solving and actually implementing the the solutions that they need to so that we actually make a difference at scale and I think the scale question was the other big theme that came out that there's so much to do there's so little time and we have actually not been successful over the last several decades in in addressing some of these issues that we believe are so important and finally the need to make sure that education as we see it is focused on values that teachers teach that they are that they integrate and practice what they are trying to teach and that they have the support that they need and finally as Teresa reminded us each one of us needs to do something today on that note thank you so much for joining and Sam I hand it back to you thank you so much Chandrika and thank you to our wonderful speakers it's been such an exciting couple of sessions and thank you to our audience for sticking around and of course to our wonderful model model says Chandrika Monica and at the beginning Jeff given so much content has been covered and there's so much to talk about we will have some breakout sessions so feel free to stick around for another 15 20 minutes and you will go into different groups and and you know reflect on the session but before that happens I would want to just be one minute about the the reflections on the entire day we talked about the importance of changing policy and working with governments the importance of localization education working organically with local institution developing inclusive and whole school curriculum the importance of a comprehensive approach to education looking at socio-emotional multicultural interdisciplinary and of course a localized angle the importance of bringing young people to the table for this transformation and working with them as partners the importance of universities immobilizing the knowledge expertise and human resources to support target 4.7 and transformations needed to tackle climate change the importance of digital technologies to transform learning but also understanding their limitations as Professor Schiessler pointed out earlier and the importance of not just curriculum but how it is applied and how empowered we can make and support teachers in other words professional education as well I'm going beyond the SDGs so wonderful it ends there and tomorrow we have a very exciting and action packed day ahead of us join me tomorrow where we will have the executive director of UNICEF Henrietta Paul, Mohamed Yunus the Nobel laureate and founder of the Gramian Bank, Hindu Ibrahim the indigenous rights activist and representative of the secretary general SDG advocates, Professor Yanis Varoufakis one of the key architects of the Green Deal in Europe and of course the secretary general's envoy on youth finally we will have the wonderful launch of the fourth edition of the youth solutions report so we will start here again at 755 New York time tomorrow Thursday with the executive director of UNICEF who I will ask about their role and their instrumental position in saving lives during this pandemic thank you so much for joining us live stream can stop there and we will now go into