From December 1 to 4, 2009, UNESCO-INRULED Director Zhu Xiaoman attended the sixth International Conference on Adult Education in Belem, Brazil. This conference was held by UNESCO, UIL and the Brazil Ministry of Education. Featuring the theme “Living and Learning for a Viable Future: The Power of Adult Learning”, this conference was a high-level gathering after CONFINTEA V in Hamburg, Germany in 1997. This year, 154 countries sent their delegations to the conference while 207 countries submitted national reports. Altogether, over 1000 people attended the conference. Held every 12 years, CONFINTEA meetings are the highest level conferences organized by UNESCO in the field of adult education. Before CONFINTEA VI, there have been five regional preparatory meetings which engendered regional reports on the basis of which the global report on adult education (GRALE) was formulated. This was the first ever report on adult education on the global scale.
Director Zhu in CONFINTEA VI
In the opening session, UNESCO Director-General Madame Irina Bokova gave the opening address, reiterating the key importance of adult education against the background of the global financial crisis. “One in six adults – a staggering 774 million – cannot ‘read the world’ as Paulo Freire would put it because they lack basic literacy and numeracy skills. Sixty-seven percent of these adults are women, with dramatic consequences for the well-being of their children and families.” Therefore, all stakeholders need to take solid actions to guarantee adult learning in their countries, which is indispensable for a “viable future”.
UESCO DG, Madame Bokova giving the opening speech
After Madame Bokova’s speech, Mr. Walter Hirche, President of CONFINTEA V, Mr. Alpha Oumar Konare, former President of Mali and former Chairperson of the African Union, and HRH Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands, UNESCO Special Envoy on Literacy for Development addressed the opening session.
Regional outcome documents were presented and the GRALE report was introduced in this conference.
During the four days in the conference, four keynote addresses, five roundtable discussions and 32 parallel workshops were arranged, covering ten topics related to adult learning, which were: “Living and Learning for a Viable Future: The Power of Adult Learning”; “Inclusion and Participation in Adult Education”; “Confront Global Issues”; “Policies and Governance for Adult Education”; “Financing of Adult Education”; “Towards Lifelong Learning”; “Literacy as a Key Competence for Lifelong Learning”; “Assuring the Quality of Adult Education and Assessing Learning Outcomes”; “From Rhetoric to Action” and “The Way Forward”.
INRULED Director in the CONFINTEA VI workshop, Dec. 3, 2009
On the third afternoon, INRULED Director Zhu Xiaoman and Programme Officer Lu Kun gave a presentation in the workshop “Good Practices for Effective Literacy Programme Delivery --- Focus on E9”, organized by UNESCO EFA unit, UNESCO Brasilia Office and the Ministry of education of Brazil. The title of INRULED presentation was “Migrant Workers’ Training in China’s Urbanization”. The presentation introduced the general background of migrant workers in the rapid urbanization process in China, emerging problems, policies for migrant workers’ training, the contents and methods of migrant workers’ training and its financing models. Prof. Zhu also answered the questions from the audience.
INRULED was invited to give the presentation by the organizers of CONFINTEA, partly because of the recent E9 Seminar on Adult Learning in Rural Areas successfully co-organized by INRULED, partly because INRULED is the only organization on rural education in the UNESCO system. Because INRULED is based in China, and the most pressing issue in Chinese adult learning is migrant workers’ learning, we selected the topic of Chinese migrant workers’ training after careful consideration.
This topic attracted great attention from African delegates. Mr. Joseph Ngu, Representative of UNESCO Nigeria Office, commented that the Chinese experience in training its migrant workers can lend light for African countries. Many African delegates raised questions and gave comments to the China case.
Happily meeting with our board member, Prof. Mazoor Ahmed
In this conference, we also met with the delegates who had participated in our Beijing E9 Seminar, which was a pleasant experience. We also had a lot of communication with colleagues in various organizations of UNESCO, experts and resource persons from organizations worldwide as well as officials from the Ministries of Education in different countries.
Reporting our work to UNESCO DADG of Education Sector, Dr. Tang Qian
We had the opportunity to report on our work to our supervisors from the UNESCO headquarter.
We also seized the chance to disseminate our brochures to about 200 CONFINTEA VI participants. Meanwhile, we collected a large amount of materials related to rural education and adult education while establishing connections with relevant organizations.
The CONFINTEA VI has proven to be a great learning experience for INRULED with its rich information, large amount of resource persons and organizations.
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