The DG and First Ladies

Laura Bush and other First Ladies with Mr Matsuura
© White House/Chris Greenberg

UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura attended the Global Campaign for Education event in New York this week, where the new coalition was launched to galvanize action towards achieving the Education for All Goals by the target date of 2015.

$4.5 Billion New Pledges for Education at UN Summit

According to Agence France Press, UN chief Ban Ki-moon announced yesterday that 4.5 billion dollars' worth of new pledges and commitments were made at the United Nations Summit on the Millennium Development Goals to get 24 million children into school by 2010, as a milestone toward universal primary education by 2015.

Meeting of UNESCO's Executive Board - 30 September to 17 October

UNESCO's Executive Board, chaired by Ambassador Olabiyi Babalola Joseph Yaï (Benin), will meet from 30 September to 17 October in Paris for its 180th session. In addition to the regular oversight of the UNESCO program carried out by the Executive Board, there is to be a thematic debate on the protection of indigenous and endangered languages and on the role of language in promoting Education for All and sustainable development.

EFA - Global Monitoring Report 2008

EDUCATION FOR ALL BY 2015: WILL WE MAKE IT?

A mid-term assessment of where the world stands on its commitment to provide basic education for all children, youth and adults by 2015.

What education policies and programmes have been successful? What are the main challenges? How much aid is needed? Is aid being properly targeted?

Click here to read the report (PDF)!

UNESCO launches new fund to advance Global Literacy

First Lady Laura Bush announced today that UNESCO will receive more than $2 million from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to launch the United Nations Literacy Decade (UNLD) Fund, a new initiative that will advance global literacy. UNESCO is the lead agency for the coordination of the UN Literacy Decade.

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UNESCO-World Sky Race Join Together

The World Heritage Center and the World Air League, a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization, have established a partnership aiming to promote environmental protection and the use of lighter-than-air skyships as a means to reduce pollution and pressures caused by transportation.

The World Air League is currently promoting the World Sky Race, an historic tour and competition of lighter-than-air skyships racing 30,000+ miles. It also will be setting up on its website a means to make charitable contributions to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Don R. Hartsell, World Air League (WAL) Commissioner and Managing Director is also Chairman of Solex Environmental Systems, Inc.

Training-the-Trainers in Information Literacy

Information Literacy is the set of skills needed to find, retrieve, analyze, and use information.
The American Library Association

Information and media literacy enables people to interpret and make informed judgments as users of information and media, as well as to become skillful creators and producers of information and media messages in their own right. UNESCO encourages the development of national information and media literacy policies, including in education.

In September 2007, the Bureau of the Intergovernmental Council for the Information for All Program (IFAP) decided to fund a global scale-up project on information literacy and agreed on a series of regional Training-The-Trainers workshops in information literacy.

The project foresees to organize a series of 11 Training-the-Trainers workshops in information literacy, to be held from 2008 to 2009 in several institutions of higher education covering all regions of the world.

Read more!