Putting SDG 4 Back on Track After COVID-19: The Essential Role of Multilingualism in Education

A High-Level Political Forum Side Event on 11 July 2022

co-hosted by the NGO Committee on Language and Languages, the Universal Esperanto Association, and the Permanent Mission of Spain to the United Nations

Register here by July 10!

About:

Even before COVID-19, alarms were sounded that progress on SDG 4 was too slow and that the achievement of its targets by 2030 was in jeopardy. Linguistic inequality in access to education has been a key factor. The 2016 Global Education Monitoring Report showed that 40% of the global population was not accessing education in a language they understand. The onset of the pandemic exacerbated such inequalities as over 1.6 billion learners experienced school closures, cutting them off from language and literacy learning opportunities. Moreover, the digital divide prevented vulnerable populations, especially in least developed countries, from accessing online education, including resources for language development. In order to achieve inclusive and equitable education for linguistically diverse student populations, multilingualism must be foregrounded in post-pandemic educational planning.

Accordingly, this side event focuses on recommendations for the role of languages in education put forth in Reimagining Our Futures Together: A New Social Contract for Education, the UNESCO report on the Futures of Education initiative. Specifically, it brings together leading experts in the field of language education from diverse global contexts who address what it means in practice to take a multilingual perspective on the targets of SDG 4. Drawing upon empirical research and documented best practices, they demonstrate how schools can cultivate multilingual resources, including mother tongues, major world languages, national and regional languages, Indigenous languages, and international languages like Esperanto to achieve inclusive and equitable education that empowers students as global citizens prepared for participation in social, economic, and political life.

Programme:

Pedagogical Translanguaging to Make the Most of Multilingualism, Professor Jasone Cenoz, University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU
Multilingualism as a Resource for Learning and a Decolonial Strategy, Dr. Xolisa Guzula, University of Capetown, School of Education

Moderated by Professor Humphrey Tonkin and Professor Francis M. Hult with welcoming remarks by Mr. Guillermo Escribano, Director General for the Spanish Language around the World at the Foreign Affairs Ministry of Spain

__________________________________________________________________________________________

CoNGO Notes: The NGO Committee on Language and Languages is a Substantive Committee of the Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations – for more information, please email the co-chairs at tonkin@hartford.edu or fmhult@umbc.edu. Likewise, for more information on the NGO Committee on Social Development, please visit ngosocdev.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on Education, Learning, and Literacy, please visit facebook.com/NGOCELLatUN.

Putting SDG 4 Back on Track After COVID-19: The Essential Role of Multilingualism in Education

A High-Level Political Forum Side Event on 11 July 2022

co-hosted by the NGO Committee on Language and Languages, the Universal Esperanto Association, and the Permanent Mission of Spain to the United Nations

Register here by July 10!

About:

Even before COVID-19, alarms were sounded that progress on SDG 4 was too slow and that the achievement of its targets by 2030 was in jeopardy. Linguistic inequality in access to education has been a key factor. The 2016 Global Education Monitoring Report showed that 40% of the global population was not accessing education in a language they understand. The onset of the pandemic exacerbated such inequalities as over 1.6 billion learners experienced school closures, cutting them off from language and literacy learning opportunities. Moreover, the digital divide prevented vulnerable populations, especially in least developed countries, from accessing online education, including resources for language development. In order to achieve inclusive and equitable education for linguistically diverse student populations, multilingualism must be foregrounded in post-pandemic educational planning.

Accordingly, this side event focuses on recommendations for the role of languages in education put forth in Reimagining Our Futures Together: A New Social Contract for Education, the UNESCO report on the Futures of Education initiative. Specifically, it brings together leading experts in the field of language education from diverse global contexts who address what it means in practice to take a multilingual perspective on the targets of SDG 4. Drawing upon empirical research and documented best practices, they demonstrate how schools can cultivate multilingual resources, including mother tongues, major world languages, national and regional languages, Indigenous languages, and international languages like Esperanto to achieve inclusive and equitable education that empowers students as global citizens prepared for participation in social, economic, and political life.

Programme:

Pedagogical Translanguaging to Make the Most of Multilingualism, Professor Jasone Cenoz, University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU
Multilingualism as a Resource for Learning and a Decolonial Strategy, Dr. Xolisa Guzula, University of Capetown, School of Education

Moderated by Professor Humphrey Tonkin and Professor Francis M. Hult with welcoming remarks by Mr. Guillermo Escribano, Director General for the Spanish Language around the World at the Foreign Affairs Ministry of Spain

__________________________________________________________________________________________

CoNGO Notes: The NGO Committee on Language and Languages is a Substantive Committee of the Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations – for more information, please email the co-chairs at tonkin@hartford.edu or fmhult@umbc.edu. Likewise, for more information on the NGO Committee on Social Development, please visit ngosocdev.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on Education, Learning, and Literacy, please visit facebook.com/NGOCELLatUN.

[book launch] Contemporary ecotheology, climate justice and environmental stewardship in world religions

Seasonal Greetings from Switzerland,

On behalf of the World Council of Churches’ Economic and Ecological Justice Programme, please find below the invitation to attend our upcoming ECOTHEE book launch webinar:

“Contemporary ecotheology, climate justice and environmental stewardship in world religions” (ecothee. Vol. 6) taking place Tuesday, 14^th December 2021 at 17:00 CET

Please register through this link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIpd-2pqTorGdBLN1P6LWw67PhPNO8pDAVo

Kindly find the link on our website, for additional information about the programme: https://www.oikoumene.org/events/book-launch-webinar-contemporary-ecotheology-climate-justice-and-environmental-stewardship-in-world-religions .

___________________________________________________________________________________________

CoNGO Notes: For more information on the Committee of Religious NGOs at the United Nations, please visit rngos.wordpress.com. For more information on the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-Vienna, please visit congocsd.wordpress.com. For more information on the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-NY, please visit ngocsd-ny.org.

[book launch] Contemporary ecotheology, climate justice and environmental stewardship in world religions

Seasonal Greetings from Switzerland,

On behalf of the World Council of Churches’ Economic and Ecological Justice Programme, please find below the invitation to attend our upcoming ECOTHEE book launch webinar:

“Contemporary ecotheology, climate justice and environmental stewardship in world religions” (ecothee. Vol. 6) taking place Tuesday, 14^th December 2021 at 17:00 CET

Please register through this link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIpd-2pqTorGdBLN1P6LWw67PhPNO8pDAVo

Kindly find the link on our website, for additional information about the programme: https://www.oikoumene.org/events/book-launch-webinar-contemporary-ecotheology-climate-justice-and-environmental-stewardship-in-world-religions .

___________________________________________________________________________________________

CoNGO Notes: For more information on the Committee of Religious NGOs at the United Nations, please visit rngos.wordpress.com. For more information on the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-Vienna, please visit congocsd.wordpress.com. For more information on the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-NY, please visit ngocsd-ny.org.

The Climate Emergency: Does Religion Matter?

You are invited to “The Climate Emergency: Does Religion Matter?”, the latest installment of the Temple of Understanding’s ECO JUSTICE FOR ALL Dialogues. These are special intimate discussions about the climate emergency with international ChangeMakers.

ECO JUSTICE FOR ALL interviews and dialogues are ongoing programs presented by the Temple of Understanding, incorporating our outreach in the area of environmental awareness and advocacy. We present a diverse range of perspectives, from scientific to spiritual views, on the climate emergency and offer a variety of solutions that we can all do easily and effectively in our everyday lives. World religious and spiritual visionaries, Indigenous leaders, scientists and social scientists, environmental activists, artists, musicians and writers, youth and elders, local and global people, all come together to address the urgency of the climate crisis through these ongoing interviews and dialogues.

Register here!

Speakers:

Rabbi Ellen Bernstein is an eco-theologian, spiritual leader, writer and creative. She founded Shomrei Adamah, Keepers of the Earth, the first national Jewish environmental organization in 1988. Her books include Let the Earth Teach You Torah, Ecology and the Jewish Spirit, and The Splendor of Creation. Ellen also created the first ecologically-centered Tu B’Sh’vat (Jewish New Year of theTrees) seder in 1988 and popularized Tu B’Sh’vat as a community-wide inter-spiritual ecological arts celebration for all peoples. Her most recent book, The Promise of the Land, A Passover Haggadah is the first comprehensive, ecological haggadah (guidebook) for Passover (Behrman House, 2020). In 2020 during the pandemic, Ellen launched the Earth Seder movement, helping to organize several dozen world-wide Earth Seders on Zoom. Ellen continues to write and teach on the ecology of the Hebrew Bible, and serves on the advisory board of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology. To learn more please visit ellenbernstein.org and thepromiseoftheland.com.

Theodore Hiebert writes about biblical perspectives on the environment and about biblical views of identity and difference. His book The Yahwist’s Landscape: Nature and Religion in Early Israel challenges claims that the Bible privileges humans and separates them from nature, and it shows how biblical religion is grounded in the natural world. He has made contributions about biblical perspectives on nature to such works as The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, The Oxford Companion to the Bible, Earth and Word: Classic Sermons on Saving the Planet, and Interpretation. He is the author of the article on Genesis for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of the Bible and Ecology. Ted was the lead translator of the Book of Genesis and one of the editors for the recent English translation, the Common English Bible (CEB). He wrote the notes to Genesis for the CEB Study Bible and for the New Interpreter’s Study Bible, based on the New Revised Standard Version. He is the Old Testament editor for Abingdon Press’s Covenant Bible Study. Ted also writes about biblical views of identity and difference. His book The Beginning of Difference: Discovering Identity in God’s Diverse World challenges exclusivist cultural interpretations of the book of Genesis and reveals a text that embraces and celebrates ethnic identities and differences. It contains a reinterpretation of the story of Babel as positive account of the origin of the world’s cultures. God’s Big Plan, which he co-authored with Elizabeth Caldwell, is a children’s story of Babel based on this new interpretation. Ted is currently at work on a study of the book of Genesis as migration literature. Ted is a member of the Mennonite Church and has served as pastor of the Boston Mennonite Congregation. He is a frequent lecturer and teacher in adult education programs in churches in the Chicago area. He is Francis A. McGaw Professor of Old Testament and Dean of the Faculty Emeritus at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago and lives in Homewood, IL.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

CoNGO Notes: For more information on the Committee of Religious NGOs at the United Nations, please visit rngos.wordpress.com. For more information on the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-NY, please visit ngocsd-ny.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-Vienna, please visit congocsd.wordpress.com.

The Climate Emergency: Does Religion Matter?

You are invited to “The Climate Emergency: Does Religion Matter?”, the latest installment of the Temple of Understanding’s ECO JUSTICE FOR ALL Dialogues. These are special intimate discussions about the climate emergency with international ChangeMakers.

ECO JUSTICE FOR ALL interviews and dialogues are ongoing programs presented by the Temple of Understanding, incorporating our outreach in the area of environmental awareness and advocacy. We present a diverse range of perspectives, from scientific to spiritual views, on the climate emergency and offer a variety of solutions that we can all do easily and effectively in our everyday lives. World religious and spiritual visionaries, Indigenous leaders, scientists and social scientists, environmental activists, artists, musicians and writers, youth and elders, local and global people, all come together to address the urgency of the climate crisis through these ongoing interviews and dialogues.

Register here!

Speakers:

Rabbi Ellen Bernstein is an eco-theologian, spiritual leader, writer and creative. She founded Shomrei Adamah, Keepers of the Earth, the first national Jewish environmental organization in 1988. Her books include Let the Earth Teach You Torah, Ecology and the Jewish Spirit, and The Splendor of Creation. Ellen also created the first ecologically-centered Tu B’Sh’vat (Jewish New Year of theTrees) seder in 1988 and popularized Tu B’Sh’vat as a community-wide inter-spiritual ecological arts celebration for all peoples. Her most recent book, The Promise of the Land, A Passover Haggadah is the first comprehensive, ecological haggadah (guidebook) for Passover (Behrman House, 2020). In 2020 during the pandemic, Ellen launched the Earth Seder movement, helping to organize several dozen world-wide Earth Seders on Zoom. Ellen continues to write and teach on the ecology of the Hebrew Bible, and serves on the advisory board of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology. To learn more please visit ellenbernstein.org and thepromiseoftheland.com.

Theodore Hiebert writes about biblical perspectives on the environment and about biblical views of identity and difference. His book The Yahwist’s Landscape: Nature and Religion in Early Israel challenges claims that the Bible privileges humans and separates them from nature, and it shows how biblical religion is grounded in the natural world. He has made contributions about biblical perspectives on nature to such works as The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, The Oxford Companion to the Bible, Earth and Word: Classic Sermons on Saving the Planet, and Interpretation. He is the author of the article on Genesis for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of the Bible and Ecology. Ted was the lead translator of the Book of Genesis and one of the editors for the recent English translation, the Common English Bible (CEB). He wrote the notes to Genesis for the CEB Study Bible and for the New Interpreter’s Study Bible, based on the New Revised Standard Version. He is the Old Testament editor for Abingdon Press’s Covenant Bible Study. Ted also writes about biblical views of identity and difference. His book The Beginning of Difference: Discovering Identity in God’s Diverse World challenges exclusivist cultural interpretations of the book of Genesis and reveals a text that embraces and celebrates ethnic identities and differences. It contains a reinterpretation of the story of Babel as positive account of the origin of the world’s cultures. God’s Big Plan, which he co-authored with Elizabeth Caldwell, is a children’s story of Babel based on this new interpretation. Ted is currently at work on a study of the book of Genesis as migration literature. Ted is a member of the Mennonite Church and has served as pastor of the Boston Mennonite Congregation. He is a frequent lecturer and teacher in adult education programs in churches in the Chicago area. He is Francis A. McGaw Professor of Old Testament and Dean of the Faculty Emeritus at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago and lives in Homewood, IL.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

CoNGO Notes: For more information on the Committee of Religious NGOs at the United Nations, please visit rngos.wordpress.com. For more information on the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-NY, please visit ngocsd-ny.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-Vienna, please visit congocsd.wordpress.com.

Making equitable education and decent jobs work for the marginalized: Pathway to a gender-just recovery

In this side event with GCE, ASPBAE will be doing a soft launch of the 2021 Spotlight Reports. In ASPBAE, the national education coalitions in Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia and Japan have produced country reports. These Spotlight Reports emphasize the role of education as a driver towards sustained recovery and resiliency.

There will be interpretation for sign language, Hindi, Indonesia and Russian.

Register here: https://unwomen.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_IWPVF2MNRPiiyk7tF_8ehw

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

CoNGO Notes: For more information on the NGO Committee on Education, Learning, and Literacy, please visit facebook.com/NGOCELLatUN. For more information on the NGO Committee on the Status of Women-NY, please visit ngocsw.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on the Status of Women-Geneva, please visit ngocsw-geneva.ch. For more information on the NGO Committee on the Status of Women-Vienna, please visit ngocswvienna.org.

Making equitable education and decent jobs work for the marginalized: Pathway to a gender-just recovery

In this side event with GCE, ASPBAE will be doing a soft launch of the 2021 Spotlight Reports. In ASPBAE, the national education coalitions in Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia and Japan have produced country reports. These Spotlight Reports emphasize the role of education as a driver towards sustained recovery and resiliency.

There will be interpretation for sign language, Hindi, Indonesia and Russian.

Register here: https://unwomen.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_IWPVF2MNRPiiyk7tF_8ehw

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

CoNGO Notes: For more information on the NGO Committee on Education, Learning, and Literacy, please visit facebook.com/NGOCELLatUN. For more information on the NGO Committee on the Status of Women-NY, please visit ngocsw.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on the Status of Women-Geneva, please visit ngocsw-geneva.ch. For more information on the NGO Committee on the Status of Women-Vienna, please visit ngocswvienna.org.

ASPBAE Asia Pacific Policy Dialogue on Education Financing

Dear ASPBAE Members and Friends,

We cordially invite you to join the ASPBAE Asia Pacific Policy Dialogue on Education Financing which will be held on Monday, 26 April 2021, at 1:00 pm Manila time (Philippine Standard Time).

This is a key Asia Pacific event as part of the Global Action Week for Education (GAWE) held from 26-30 April and the One Billion Voices Campaign, both coordinated by the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) and supported by ASPBAE. Each regional network member of GCE is holding an event on a different day of GAWE, and the Asia Pacific event by ASPBAE is the first one to start the week on Monday 26 April.

We hope you can join us in this event and encourage your colleagues to participate as well. There is no registration process required. Join the Zoom Meeting here:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86001255005?pwd=M0h2ZVV3ZGY5VG51Zzl5OUZORDBlQT09
Meeting ID: 860 0125 5005; Passcode: 850131

The event will be attended by three senior government officials, one each from Timor Leste, the Philippines and Bangladesh speaking, along with a presentation from the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), as well as a presentation from ASPBAE and a youth representative from NCE Nepal. There will be space at the end of the speeches and inputs for a number of questions to the speakers.

Objective:

The objective of the Asia Pacific Regional Dialogue on Education Financing is to encourage governments to mobilise national resources that can ensure inclusive education systems and programmes that prioritise the most marginalised.

Rationale:

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a huge gap between education spending, and what was actually needed to achieve SDG4. The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly exacerbated this gap, and has led to a curtailment of funding by donors and governments for the education of its people. More than ever, it is important for governments to step up and protect national education budgets, and even better, to increase them, especially to enable education access to rural and remote communities, people with disabilities, those that are missing out on school, unemployed youth, and those that have no access to online learning opportunities.

This online event is part of the Global Action Week for Education (GAWE), an annual international week of campaigning for improved national education policies and increased national education budgets. The theme of GAWE this year is education financing towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). GAWE is part of a year-long campaign organised by the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) called One Billion Voices.

Rallying Call: ‘Protect Education Budgets: reach the most marginalised’

Main speakers:

Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, Chair, Senate Committee on Basic Education, Arts and Culture
Dr. António Guterres, Vice Minister for Education, Youth and Sport, Timor-Leste
Mr. Md. Mahbub Hossain, Secretary, Secondary and Higher Education Division, Ministry of Education in Bangladesh
GPE presentation: recorded message from Ms Margarita Focas Licht, Chief, Effective Partnerships

________________________________________________________________________________________

CoNGO Notes: For more information on the NGO Committee on Education, Learning, and Literacy, please visit facebook.com/NGOCELLatUN. For more information on the NGO Committee on Financing for Development, please visit ngosonffd.org.

Language and Migration: Experience and Memory

Language is a vital, but under-explored, factor in the lives of migrants, immigrants and refugees. It has a direct impact on the experiences and choices of individuals displaced by war, terror, or natural disasters and the decisions made by agents who provide (or fail to provide) relief, services, and status. Distilled through memory, it shapes the fictions, poems, memoirs, films and song lyrics in which migrants render loss and displacement, integration and discovery, the translation of history and culture, and the trials of identity.

This interdisciplinary symposium will convene humanists and social scientists, field-workers and policy-makers, artists and writers, to think together about migrants as resourceful users, interpreters, and creators of language.

The symposium will take place online between Monday, April 19 and Saturday May 1, 2021. Amid the disappointment of not being able to hold the symposium in person, we’ve managed to find two advantages to the virtual format: to enable participation by those without the means or time to attend, and to achieve a more satisfying exchange among humanists, social scientists, and people who work in the fields of education, language policy and language justice. We encourage you to attend as many sessions of the symposium as you can, which are spread out over two weeks to avoid zoom fatigue.

Special events: Our symposium will feature two keynote speakers: Prof. Sarah Dryden-Peterson of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who will open our symposium with a lecture on Monday April 19; and Prof. Viet Thanh Nguyen, Aerol Arnold Professor of English, University of Southern California, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Sympathizer, who will give the closing lecture on Saturday May 1. On Friday evening, April 30, we are delighted to host a reading by Jhumpa Lahiri, Yiyun Li and Aleksandar Hemon, three distinguished members of Princeton’s Creative Writing faculty.

Access the full detailed program here: https://migration.princeton.edu/symposium/program

Learn more here: https://princeton.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_GNf33xbFR1O9wdsn38Hk6Q

________________________________________________________________________________________

CoNGO Notes: For more information on the NGO Committee on Migration, please visit ngo-migration.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on Education, Learning, and Literacy, please visit facebook.com/NGOCELLatUN.

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