Hong Kong’s first blog for SDG education news and announcements
The International Day of Friendship was proclaimed in 2011 by the UN General Assembly with the idea that friendship between peoples, countries, cultures and individuals can inspire peace efforts and build bridges between communities. The resolution places emphasis on involving young people, as future leaders, in community activities that include different cultures and promote international understanding and respect for diversity. To mark the International Day of Friendship the UN encourages governments, international organizations and civil society groups to hold events, activities and initiatives that contribute to the efforts of the international community towards promoting a dialogue among civilizations, solidarity, mutual understanding and reconciliation. The International Day of Friendship is an initiative that follows on the proposal made by UNESCO defining the Culture of Peace as a set of values, attitudes and behaviours that reject violence and endeavou . . .
It was lovely to have these 3 youngsters in our fashion workshop last week. They came for five mornings to learn some basic sewing, design, pattern-making and embellishments. Here you can see them all wearing their very own hand-made T-shirts. Aged 11 and 12 and they never sewed before. Now they go away knowing how great it is to make your own clothes. We hope that experiences like these will help show young people that making at least some of your own clothes will mean you use better fabrics, make them to a higher quality and instill a love in them that makes you keep them for longer – all elements of clothes-making lost in the mass fashion/garment industry – and a step towards sustainable fashion. . . .
Winky Wang joined the YCI Member programme at ITS in March 2021. Like most new members, she already had a clear passion – SDG4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. But how exactly to address this? The mentoring process allowed her to direct her research in a number of areas and saw her initial ideas around supporting local school students generally in some DSE subjects develop into a specific idea to support young Non-Cantonese Speakers with a beginners Cantonese course teaching everyday language so that they can begin to feel more at home in their city, especially if they are in local schools where much of the classroom and all of the playground is conducted in Cantonese. Winky wants to go into education management or curriculum development and could see the value of seeing what the whole process looks like from recognizing a learning need in the community, to developing a course, to making specific lesson plan . . .
One of the important things we do at ITS Education Asia is help students take IGCSE, IAL and other exams they cannot get at their mainstream school. We are non-selective and we measure our success by answering the question: did the student get a grade that allowed them access to the next stage of their life? SDG4 and SDG10 should complement each other. BUT, that doesn't mean we don't celebrate high achievers as well. This is not a zero sum game. Covid has delayed so many things so it was a pleasure this week to present (a year late) a very happy Marco Algozer with his Pearson award for Highest Mark in the World - yes WORLD - in his IGCSE Italian. Well done Marco! . . .
UNESCO estimates that schools were either fully or partially closed for more than 30 weeks between March 2020 and May 2021 in half the countries of the world. In late June, 19 countries still had full school closures, affecting nearly 157 million learners. And 768 million more learners were affected by partial school closures. World Youth Skills Day 2021 paid tribute to the resilience and creativity of youth through the crisis. Participants focused on how technical and vocational education and training systems have adapted to the pandemic and recession, think of how those systems can participate in the recovery, and imagine priorities they should adopt for the post-COVID-19-world. ITS hosted a conference workshop run by ISSIA. Great work. . . .
Pleased to recently host workshops for HelpingOurPlanetEarth - HOPE - which is a youth-led peer-to-peer mental health initiative. Music and art play a big part in their work and allow those without the resources to access clinical care to find some respite and support in busy HK. They are always looking for support. HOPE home page: https://www.helpingourplanetearth.org/ . . .
The Hong Kong Sustainable Development Solutions Network (ITS is a Youth Member Organization) will run a shoreline clean-up day tomorrow, 17th July at Lung Kwu Tan. Come and help out!! . . .
Jason Qiu spoke at Asia-Pacific Climate Week 2021 last week on the back of his ongoing Young Changemaker Incubator project called Carbon Neutral. As highlighted on this page before, Jason is building out a volunteer programme for tree planting at his school and hopes to provide a template for other schools around the world by doing so. . . .
