Happy New Year

World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development

UNESCO’s Director-General and Assistant Director-General for Education have announced that the "World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development – Moving into the Second Half of the UN Decade” will be held in Bonn, Germany, from 31 March to 2 April 2009.

Some 700 stakeholders from all over the world will attend the conference, which is being organized by UNESCO and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, in cooperation with the German Commission for UNESCO.

Registration will begin in November 2008

U.S. Based organization Curriki receives UNESCO’s 2007 King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize

The Global Education and Learning Community (Curriki) was one of two recipients of the the 2007 King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize in a ceremony held at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on Wednesday, 19 December 2007. Curriki Executive Director Barbara Kurshan attended the ceremony and accepted the award on behalf of Curriki. United States Deputy Permanent Delegate to UNESCO Stephen Engelken was also present at the ceremony.

Curriki is an online environment created to support the development and free distribution of world-class educational materials to anyone who needs them. Curriki is different from other e-learning sites in that it focuses on complete curricula and not just a textbook or lesson plans, and provides easy-to-use tools for creating curriculum packets out of content available on the site. The 10,000 learning resources available on Curriki are used regularly by 35,000 people. Current offerings range from lesson plans, assessments and media clips to complete textbooks, all available at no cost.

Merry Christmas!

US NGO Wins UNESCO Award

The Belgian Claroline Project (Claroline Consortium) and the US-based Global Education and Learning Community (Curriki) are the co-winners of the 2007 Unesco-King Hamad Award for best use of information and telecommunications in education.

Bahrain Royal Equestrian and Endurance Federation president and Royal Charity Foundation board of trustees' chairman Shaikh Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa will today present the $50,000 (BD18,745) award on behalf of His Majesty King Hamad.

Read more in the Gulf Daily News (Bahrain).

UNESCO and HP Sign Strategic Partnership Agreement

UNESCO and Hewlett-Packard (HP) signed a strategic partnership agreement on 19 December to strengthen their collaboration around existing education projects. The signing ceremony, held at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris, was attended by Koïchiro Matsuura, UNESCO Director-General and Gabriele Zedlmayer, vice president, Global Citizenship HP Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Through the partnership, UNESCO and HP will work together on several projects in the area of education, especially to support UNESCO’s priority of “Education for All". This includes an evaluation on the extension of the existing brain drain project to additional regions in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. UNESCO and HP started to collaborate five years ago in South East Europe to help key universities connect to global research networks. In 2006 the project was extended to Africa. The project fights brain drain by providing universities with an advanced technology called grid computing, which allows top quality researchers to play a key role in international research and contribute to economic development in their home countries.

Another project is the World Heritage Map, which enables the general public to visualize the spread of World Heritage sites around the globe, and raises the awareness of the World Heritage Convention. The map is above all an educational tool, allowing UNESCO to communicate its work in this field on a large scale.

In addition HP has provided a financial contribution to UNESCO for the “Printing and distribution of the Man and the Biosphere Map”. The Man and the Biosphere Map will be fully prepared and edited by the Division of Ecological and Earth Sciences of UNESCO, which will provide the full lay-out to HP for printing and distribution.

The Computer recycling training guide is also the fruit of UNESCO and HP cooperation: it aims to support local stakeholders, in developing countries in particular, to manage electronic waste. The goal is to support local actors, especially those with a background in managing used computer equipment, and to create environmentally clean and healthy business opportunities. HP is the only technology partner in the project, which also includes the French Agency for Environment and Energy Management (Agence de l'Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l'Energie - ADEME), EMMAUS, the international movement of solidarity, and TIC ETHIC, Information and Communication Technologies in the service of ethics and sustainable development.

Athelstan Spilhaus: First U.S. Ambassador to UNESCO

The new highlight on the website of Americans for UNESCO begins a series on the pioneers in the creation of the organization and on the establishment of linkages between the United States and UNESCO.

The first person to be profiled is Athelstan Spilhaus, a distinguished scientist, inventor, educator, and popularizer of science who was the first U.S. Ambassador to UNESCO and who served on its Executive Board. Late in his life, when he accurately described himself as a "retired genius", he established a world class collection of more than 3,000 mechanical toys.

Read more about this fascinating man!