Tomorrow today; 2010 - unesdoc - Unesco

How the Education for Rural People policycontributes to sustainable developmentLavinia Gasperini, Senior Officer, Agricultural Education, Office of Knowledge Exchange,Research and Extension, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United NationsNearly one out of six of the current inhabitants of theworld suffers from hunger and illiteracy and the majorityof those affected are in Africa. Education for RuralPeople (ERP) is a policy approach aimed at reducing this figureby helping the approximately one billion food-insecure people,the 776 million illiterate adults and the 75 million illiteratechildren within the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)framework. Education, labour, land, livestock and infrastructureare the key assets enabling rural households to escape poverty,and ERP is one of the most powerful weapons against hunger.A 2007 report from the British Department for InternationalDevelopment (DFID) indicates that more than USD11 billion isneeded annually for education if Africa is to have any hope ofgetting all children into primary school by 2015. The ERP partnershipflagship operates under the leadership of the Food andAgriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and inclose collaboration with UNESCO and more than 370 partners.Satellite schools are established in remote areas for the youngest childrenImage: FAOERP is one of the Partnerships for SustainableDevelopment of the United Nations Commission forSustainable Development. The partnership – launchedduring the World Summit on Sustainable Development(WSSD) – is a worldwide call to action to foster ruralpeople’s capability to be food secure, to manage naturalresources in a sustainable way and to provide educationfor all rural children, youth and adults. The partnershipaims at contributing to the removal of barriers thatprevent poor people from using their capacity, includingthe urban-rural knowledge and education gap. ERPworks through the identification of political, institutional,organizational and individual opportunities andconstraints that poor people face in accessing educationand training services at all levels of education in bothformal and non-formal settings. It seeks to empower therural poor to become fully integrated actors in the developmentprocess by promoting collaboration among theeducation, agriculture and rural development sectors toensure education and skills training for all rural people.The strategy addresses research, knowledge generationand sharing, advocacy, policy and capacity development,as well as normative and field work. ERP is also one of thenine flagships of the Education for All (EFA) programmeled by UNESCO. The most important products of ERPto date have been the knowledge generated and disseminated,the innovations identified, and the lessons learnedby ERP partners related to policy and practice in areassuch as education quality and access, gender-responsivelearning environments, parent and community engagement,and accommodation of non-traditional learners, toname just a few. These knowledge products have formedthe basis for national and regional capacity developmentmeetings worldwide.Education is essential to FAO, as indicated in itsConstitution, 1 to achieve the goals of raising levels ofnutrition and standards of living, bettering the conditionsof rural populations, and ensuring humanity’sfreedom from hunger. 2ERP employed a research-based policy approach involvingboth FAO and UNESCO in promoting multisectoralalliances between ministries of education and agriculture.Work took place simultaneously at the policy and fieldlevels with an emphasis on policy work to ensure thehighest impact in terms of cost-effectiveness.[ 38 ]