Even before the VIII Assembly was opened, women were mobilized in a global consultation convened by GEO – Gender and Education Office of ICAE. This meeting took place on 14 June, from 9 am to 5pm, in the city of Malmo, Sweden, and gathered 60 representatives of civil society organizations from around the world. 
The main objective was to promote a space for reflection from a feminist perspective on the multiple crises, the emergence of new paradigms and the role of adult education in the construction of “a world worth living in”. It also sought to strategically organize the participation of women in the ICAE World Assembly, which is beginning tomorrow.  
The session opened with the welcome words by Paul Bélanger and Celita Eccher, respectively the president and the secretary general of ICAE. Bélanger stressed the importance of GEO recognizing the contributions of the women’s movement for ICAE in its entirety. “Today, the issue of gender is everywhere, in health, justice, environment and social issues,” he said. Celita stressed the horizontal nature of the network: “Women who are willing to work without too much protocol or any authority, but well organized,” recognizing as a strength the capacity that is ICAE has today to mainstream gender in all situations.

Old and new global challenges
Participants had the challenge of mapping collectively the global context, considering old and new challenges and the possibilities of alternatives and new paradigms to them, as well as its implications for gender equity.
Gina Chiwela, from the movement People Action Forum in Zambia, noted that in sub-Saharan countries the fact of “being a girl or woman” greatly diminishes the possibility of access to education, as do the scenarios of conflict or poverty.

Another serious warning came from the Arab region. Here, despite the active and outstanding role of women in the recent revolutions that took place in Egypt, Libya and others, the fact of making legal, policy and practice changes is still an open issue.

Bernadette Brady, director of the Institute of Adult Education in Ireland, shared some trends on gender issues that also concern the European region. According to the European Commission report on education, gender gaps are highlighted in specific aspects, such as the teaching profession, which remains predominantly feminine – except for management positions and those in universities, where most teachers are men.  

Yoko Arai (JAPSE-IALLA), from Japan, spoke about the critical context in which her country is now after the nuclear accident, earthquake and tsunami they lived. There, “people forgot about the risks of nuclear energy. In the past, civil society warnings were ignored, but now these same groups become important by sharing information on the Internet. More with regard to education, students should be heard, for only in this way learning can help overcome the disasters,” she said.

Finally, Gigi Francisco (DAWN), from the Philippines, pointed out three global changes that must be taken into account regarding policy: the change in the State, of market and of movements – including women. In the state, she said, one can see new participation mechanisms and regulatory frameworks long demanded by civil society in the 80 and 90 and put us ahead of the issues: “But would it only be rhetoric? How can we demand the implementation of policies?” The second change to think about is on the market; today, the so called “philanthropic capital” gains strength, a phenomenon about which we must ask: “How to deal with this and what does it represent for the permanence of inequalities?” In this scenario, the situation of social movements also changes, often without resources for their actions, they face the ongoing challenge of developing solutions to move forward with their agenda.

New possibilities and paradigms
New alternatives were raised, as the paradigm of “living well”, which only now gains strength in Latin America and the Caribbean, as Nicole Bidegain (ICAE) recalled, by being discussed and incorporated into the new constitutions of Bolivia and Ecuador. In this sense, Maria Oviedo, from the Bolivian Campaign for the Right to Education, spoke of the importance of marrying the fight against the colonial model to the fight against patriarchy, based on the unprecedented government experience developed now in Bolivia.
In that country, the living well of indigenous peoples has been generating policies that propose a break with the colonial system, based on the dictates of some skills over others. Simultaneously, feminists from Bolivia had the initiative to add strategies to dismantle the patriarchy, especially in the education system, contributing to a structural change to overcome the asymmetries between men and women, exclusion, discrimination, and hierarchies. Also, they participated in the long process of advocacy on the Law of Education and managed to include in this legal framework many approaches that contribute to the construction of a new educational system.

Francis Quimpo, from the Centre for Environmental Affairs of the Philippines, spoke about the importance of education for sustainability in a changing world. The Pacific Asia especially suffered extreme weather events in recent years and, although most countries had ratified the legal framework for environmental sustainability, neoliberal policies continue to impact on sustainable development and so, is essential to encourage critical thinking, especially among women, for the implementation of alternative economic systems.

Lourdes Angulo (REPEM), from Mexico, presented a new vision about the economy of care and showed that from this perspective, development alternatives open to women. “For too long, the androcentric perspective prevailed: by equating economy with markets and paid work, joined women, who in general are out of this world, and women to non-economic, worthless, invisible”, she raised. The panelist defended a more elongated vision of economy that can give an account of alternative practices, whose axes are not monetization, but a variety of trading styles, with different forms of remuneration. It is therefore an economy built far beyond the resources and financial categories, which also includes non-financial and human categories. “Only from this perspective we can discuss more deeply the senses of well being,” she said.

Finally, Sofia Valdivieso (GEO), from Spain, presented a proposal of indicators to monitor equality in education, recognizing the limits of the indicators of access. Taking into account the existence of different types of inequalities between men and women – namely the unequal in treatment, expectations, conditions, representation and reference models, she argued that “it is necessary to adopt qualitative indicators that, in addition to access, give account of equal treatment and status”.
Faced with these considerations, the participants will work over the coming days with proposals and strategies in the Assembly of the International Council of Adult Education.

Photos

video

This is just beginning, but what a start!!! Encounters with faces known in similar events, shy smiles shared by those who recognize each other, tight hugs with almost strangers with whom we shared some indelible memory, outrageous laughter (I’m speaking in English with another Uruguayan or in French with an Englishman – who obviously does not speak a word in French).

And then, then work: some (I can count them on the fingers of my hands) volunteer interpreters (3 professionals, the rest … well, we are the rest – those who do what we can). So what do we do?: we sit in a corner of a room with our investiture (a bunch of colored ribbons) inviting all those who need translation to approach us, and we smile (but just to hide the panic we feel: we have never done this before and we hesitate whether we will be able to open our mouth and make a sound) but we keep smiling and go. We think we’re going to sit there to tell what others are saying, but soon we realize we’re running from one corner to another, changing the language as shirts, making signs and gestures to cover the silence (we did not understand anything and we have 10 staring faces anxious wishing to know – we too!!!

Help!!!
Socorro!!!
Aide!!!
Hjälp!!!

 And then, then the reward, despite all the small mistakes, small parts without translation, gestures, faces of panic (after 5 minutes of translation, your smile vanishes and everyone can see your face of terror – and just out of “Freddy Krueger, Jason and Terminator attack again”). The wonderful reward of gratitude of those confused faces that appreciate your effort and understand that what we are doing is breaking down barriers, getting closer, trying to get to the other, all the others to understand each other. And then yes, there is “the jackpot”, the jackpot of all lotteries in the world: is true: we are all together, side by side, each one contributing their part to make this world a world worth living in, and it is, we’re living that…
And to top it, the cherry on top of the ice-cream: Malmo and its people: how wonderful, a harmonious city that gives us an incredible welcome with joy, warmth and the friendliness of its people.

Thanks ICAE, thanks “supergirls” of the general secretariat, thanks Malmo and its people, thanks Ounsi, Natalia, Rita and Ale … without your help and adaptability … … … I don’t even want to think about it.

CONCEPT NOTE

Proponent:
The Gender and Education Office of ICAE arises from the women’s programme organised soon after the Council started off. The creation of GEO was a deepening of that programme taking into account that three important feminist networks took part in its foundation: the Network of Popular Education among Women of Latin America and the Caribbean (REPEM), the African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) and DAWN-Southeast Asia. This gave it a global strength and a very broad feminist vision. GEO´s mission is to mainstream gender in the Adult Education sector, to ensure that women are granted the right to lifelong learning and to participation as active citizens. This mission is reflected in the following objectives: (i) To monitor and follow up international agreements on gender, education and lifelong learning; (ii) To mainstream gender in different global and regional spaces such as the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE), UNESCO, World Social Forum, World Education Forum, UN Conferences, Global Campaigns for Education and UN Literacy Decade, Global Call to Action Against Poverty – GCAP/ FTF; (iii) To implement a comprehensive and systematic approach to education for inclusion from a gender perspective and promote connections among the agendas; (iv) To secure the right to education in women and feminist movements activities and in the different scenarios of global governance; (v) To support GEO members around the world to achieve the above mentioned goals though an ICT and communications strategy.

To see the whole document and programme, please visit: http://www.icae2.org/?q=en/node/1401

Alan Tuckett is Director of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE), having worked previously as an adult education organizer in Brighton and as a Principal in inner London. He started Adult Learners’ Week in the UK in 1992, and supported its adoption by UNESCO, and its spread to more than 50 countries. He is a Special Professor in Continuing Education at the University of Nottingham and an Honorary Professor at the Institute of Lifelong Learning at Leicester University. He advises UNESCO on adult learning.

Alan Tuckett is also treasurer of the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE), which is why we consulted him to know about the financial needs and challenges in the way to the ICAE VIII World Assembly in Malmö, Sweden (14-17 June).

As treasurer of ICAE, it’s easy to assume that you play a key role in organizing an event like the World Assembly. How costly is an event like this and how are you working to arrange all the financial needs?

The budget for a World Assembly is a patchwork quilt.  ICAE itself spent months fund raising and we have a USD 175,000 budget for the event. That has gone on organising, paying for plane tickets and accommodation for speakers from the global South, helping with the costs of translation, and a thousand other things.

Our key partners in Sweden – who had to put up a guarantee of USD 160,000 to start with in order to secure the accommodation have had to find money to meet a range of costs: website (USD 20,000), Congressbureau (USD 45,000), materials, programmes, logos, etc. (USD 35,000), local group in Malmö (USD 6,000), venue (USD 75,000), technique in the venue  (USD 25,000), interpretation, technique and interpreters (USD 80,000, this is extremely expensive), transport with buses (USD 12,000), cultural activities and travel costs for some contributors (USD 35,000), food (USD 165,000), and others (USD, 20,000). In part these costs are shared, because at the same venue as the Assembly, earlier that week the Nordic associations meet. So does the European Association for its annual meeting, and also the GEO.

Folkbildningsrådet is directly contributing with USD 130,000; they expect a contribution from the EAEA of USD 17,000; the city of Malmö is contributing with USD 55,000; the region of Skåne in Sweden will find USD 40,000. The Swedish National Agency for LLL will give USD 30,000 and the Nordic Network of AL USD 8,000. Different Swedish trade unions are contributing with USD 35,000, and some NGOs will find USD 16,000. The EESC and the ALDE group within COR co-finances part of the interpretation with about USD 20,000.

Participation fees were estimated to USD 210,000 but are likely to be less. Then there is the support of agencies like dvv-international that support ICAE to ensure that each region of the global south has at least three representatives. And there is more direct solidarity support between youth and adult educators in the north with their colleagues in the south. Of course, underpinning all this is the core support ICAE gets from its development partners NORAD and SDC.

Given the pressure on budgets, ICAE has asked each participant support for modest co-funding to maximise the numbers who can come.

The Danish Adult Education Association (DAEA) has decided to donate 50,000 DKK (some 9,715 USD) to support participants from the South.

How fundamental is for ICAE to count on this kind of generous contribution in order to secure global participation?

The Danish Association, like its Norwegian and Swedish compatriots makes a vital contribution to the maintenance of a global association. At a time when the funding priorities of many governments is shifting away from adult learning, mutual aid is often the only way we can make sure we really work globally.

How can ICAE members and participants collaborate in order to facilitate participation from all, including those from the South that can not afford their costs?

Every member can help, either through supporting a participant to come to Malmö;  contributing to, and promoting the virtual seminars – the papers are all on the ICAE website -; maintaining dialogue through Voices Rising, through social media, and through advocacy for youth and adult learning wherever we live.

Moema Viezzer

During her recent visit in Montevideo where she participated in the Training Institute and Regional Consultation “Strengthening the incidence and analysis of policies on gender, economic and ecological policies in Latin America”, organized by DAWN with the cooperation of GEO/ICAE on April 18-21, we were able to discuss several issues she has been working on during all these years.

From your point of view, what has the evolution of the fight for women’s rights been like in Latin America during the last decades?

I have been working on this since 1975 when the first International Women’s Tribune was held in parallel with the International Women’s Conference held in Mexico. I think that many changes have occurred since then.  First, many things that remained invisible during thousands of years, as natural events, are being nowadays addressed as issues which caused social problems that affect half the population.  I remember that when I was in Mexico there was polarization between the class struggle (it was the time when dictatorships were in force) and feminism, as if they were opposed one against the other. Working on issues that affected women would not allow the fight against the inequality among social classes. At present, as we have accepted to work on diversity the progress of humankind as such is allowed. In that sense, I see there ha been significant progress when work on equity is developed. Gender equity helps to understand the various types of diversity, we are men or women and at the same time we are African-descendants, young, adult and everything is reflected in the way we were treated for thousands of years.

For example, when women started to work massively in the labor market the production world was not organized and connected with the universe of life reproduction. Then, as it had occurred for so many centuries, women had to bear the burden of being responsible for not only the natural things that were related to reproduction such as gestating, giving birth, breastfeeding but also for everything which was related to household life. Women had both responsibilities. Men remained in the world of production and also in activities related to social, political, religious, military and administrative life without getting involved in the other aspects. That does not mean that everything which has been done has been to no avail; however, we have not reached that point where women and men may can really change the way they are in society.  I think there has been much progress regarding the legislation. Nowadays, women’s struggle to achieve same pay for same job is improving, but we have not reached total equality. In certain way, all the above mentioned is visible now and that is important.

Another difficult point, at least in my country, is the promotion of women in politics. At present we have a woman president which does not mean that in states, municipalities, what we call a second stage, we really have women in power and decision-making positions. When elections are held at local or national levels, women have always the same difficulty: to be supported by their own parties and create conditions equal to men’s in order to have access to power. I think they are points of reference but we have not reached the goal we long for.

I also think there has been a significant progress in the public policies especially aimed at women. At least in my country, it was important the acknowledgement of land ownership for rural women and also programs that have promoted the effective participation of women with economic conditions equal to men’s. There have also been other policies such as instances created to fight violence against women, domestic and family violence as well as within workplaces where violence was considered as something almost normal. The same has occurred to moral and sexual harassment. All the measures taken are important so that little by little, there is equal treatment and men and women can become equal at work and in any social environment.

Today two women are presidents in the largest countries in the region. Do you think that this situation may have incidence on the implementation of regional policies committed to economic justice related to gender and climate?

I think it may, at least in my country the President herself is demonstrating it is not enough that a woman is president if she is surrounded only by men. She has been careful enough to place men and women in ministries and she is working in that direction for the second stage. I think she has made an impact on women of different classes. Several interviews we have listened to and watched show women with self-esteem when they see themselves represented by other women in important positions. I think this is going to have an effective impact on other government positions either in municipalities or in states. It is not something taken for granted and that may remain under a symbolic condition. It is the real impact of demonstrating that it is possible for men and women to share power and decision making spaces.

In this regional consultation you are participating in discussions on the formulation of sustainable development alternatives in Latin America.

Yes, above all, I’m doing it from the point of view of education since I am an educator: education for sustainable societies with global responsibility. This is related to the idea that the declarations we already have do not suffice and it seems that when we manage to have the outcome documents, things are already happening. Many of the challenges are related to the way we have to change things we did before, believing it was the right thing to do, and at present, the Earth is showing us we have to change a lot, even the conception of what is to live well, the conception of what is to get organized from the economic, social point of view.  Japan is a rather extreme case but that leads us to reconsider what to build sustainable societies is. It seems that high technology is not going to solve problems. Japan was really an example of how everything had been thought even how to protect buildings from the point of view of engineering and architecture in the event of an earthquake. But when an earthquake or a tsunami occurs, as it happened, everything went out of control and it involved a fundamental topic: nuclear power. The most shocking aspect is how the events occurred in Japan forced the whole world to ponder over the nuclear power issue. We do not need to go through so many accidents. Was Chernobyl not enough to ponder over nuclear technology?

Nowadays we face a dilemma. We must really try to learn how to be different, how not to depend on so many things considered necessary for our welfare. In Brazil, for instance, cars:  São Pablo has to stop at certain time of the year, year after year, yet, one million cars runs all over São Pablo everyday.  Then this new paradigm has to lead us to the meaning of a sustainable society where human and non human beings may coexist and people and the planet will not walk towards destruction. But everything is organized to maintain what exists now and that is shown in world leaders’ decisions who take so long to make them in order to transform them into policies to be accepted by countries as it happened at the whole COPs process, especially at the Copenhagen conference which was a scandal of international proportions. Therefore, we have to reconsider our learning. We must ponder over our ways to interact with the environment.

There is a need for going through transforming learning processes derived from the interaction with the environment such as the process proposed by the popular environmental education, by the eco-pedagogy that works more on this interlinkage between statements and demand based on the situation of populations and the environment.  In fact, there are no social problems on one side and environmental problems on the other, they are all intertwined. We must accept our status as sustainability learners, and we cannot teach children if adults have not learnt that before. This is a new way to think on education, even at schools, based on the concept of ecological literacy brought by California Edmund Institute: when we are in front of a class of children, these are not the only ones who learn; their teachers, fathers and mothers and the ones around them are learning too.  The same occurs in popular environmental education. All which is obtained through research and participative action helps to demonstrate that adults and youngsters, independently of our academic education and our role in society, we all have to access that status of sustainability learners because it is a paradigm completely different from the one which has guided teaching practices for at least four centuries.

You participated in the Rio 92 Conference. A year after the Rio +20 review, what do you think has been the evolving debate on sustainable development in Latin America, particularly within civil society?

I feel there has been certain progress. I participated in the Global Forum parallel with the 1992 conference and participated as coordinator of the First International Conference on Environmental Education coordinating the ICAE Environmental Education Program. It was very interesting as a process and it proved the above mentioned: the division existing in the universe of organizations and movements and in such a way that if you belonged to an environmental movement you had no place in the universe of NGOs whose work was more oriented to the social field, to the point that those who worked in that field many times did not even want to talk to environmental activists. A very interesting event occurred in my country. During the Rio 92 preparation, after several debates, a Brazilian forum of NGOs and social movements was finally created. It was shocking to see how divided they were in aspects which cannot exist one without the other.

At present I see that NGOs and social movements, including the Landless Workers’ Movement, work a lot on the idea of pedagogy of the land and many NGOs that used to work exclusively with social movements have incorporated environmental issues as a part of their daily activity. That progress exists. Nevertheless, I think that in the sphere of education where I work there is still much work ahead. I have been working for CONFINTEA and for the World Social Forum and I have observed that little has been produced and worked or at least, little has been disseminated on socio-environmental education or education for sustainability among young peopel and adults, for instance. That is why I believe we have still a lot ahead so as to create new paradigms and new practices of socio-environmental education and work on what should be an axis such as socio-biodiversity, as opposed to the model of global colonization. It will only be possible to make a difference as long as we really adopt socio-biodiversity as a new paradigm.

I work on the concept of ethics of care and I think that nowadays what we call socio-environmental education is the formation for the ethics of care of everything, of ourselves, of our families. There exists a movement around all this and as this idea of care becomes clearer, human beings coexistence and the way their connecting with nature become naturally more harmonic.

Do you think that ICAE Latin-American members should take a shared standpoint to the World Meeting which will be held at Malmö?

I am not so active at present but I guess that each division of the Council will have a previous meeting or has already had it. I think that problems are worldwide, what affects us here in Latin America also affects people in Asia or Africa. From the point of view of outlining common strategies with common actions I think it may be very interesting if Latin America can present what is seen as relevant issues on education. I think that ICAE may achieve a lot if they present what has been brought to the last conferences such as the UNESCO’s so that all the affiliated centers of ICAE become pioneers in this new way of thinking adult and children’s education, connected to the relevant issues which have arisen due to great global crisis, not only the environmental crisis. Perhaps, Malmö will represent a milestone and I think that it would also be interesting for ICAE to participate in Rio+20 with a clear proposal from the civil society together with other organizations. ICAE should be a voice of the civil society and somehow help to gather together people who wish to build a sustainable world.  I wish it could contribute, together with other institutions, to have more incidence on United Nations organizations.

We are trying to organize the Second International Conference on Environmental Education together with some international institutions such as ICAE, the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University, Siglo XXIII (23rd Century) –which from El Salvador is networking in Central America- and also some European institutions. I hope that during this year previous to Rio+20 male and female educators of the world get mobilized as it happened in the First International Conference on Environmental Education, which for many people was clarifying, above all in the sense of feeling as learners and work under the same conception: to get educated in order to build sustainable societies, respecting ecosystems and cultures with global responsibility. It is clear that what happens in Uruguay is very much related to what happens in other countries, and not only here at the River Plate Basin. It would be good for ICAE to further this cause so that Malmö serves as a stepping stone from the strategic and programmatic points of view to present, jointly with other institutions, this idea before the United Nations.  World leaders have much to learn. There are things that should not happen, as common sense says, like the thing that happened in Copenhagen.

In 2009 I arrived one day to Montevideo airport, alone, anxious and thinking, what am I doing? I’m going alone to Belém do Pará, to something called FISC, simply because in that year someone had talked to me about IALLA – obviously, didn’t know either what was IALLA. I asked for a couple of days off my job – in the worst possible moment – why…? Well, the truth is I have no idea why I did it, I guess by intuition, but I did it. I left in the worst time of work to get inside (almost literally) a university in the city of Belém, that I barely knew on the routes from the hotel to the university … to discover a world difficult to define in words, but very easy to describe with emotions.

Let me tell you my story chronologically: I arrived to the airport (you know how) and I saw a group of women carrying heavy boxes, I went over and pretending looking in another way I read that the boxes said: ICAE; that was when I breathe for the first time. That’s them, they exist, they are going to Belém and the FISC!!! It took me 1/10 of a second to go over and ask who was Cecilia, the only one I knew on the phone and had encouraged me to go, but without giving me many details.

Upon arriving to San Pablo, the poor women (Ana, Irene, Hortencia …) pretended to be asleep to avoid getting mad with my questions, they just smiled and told me to calm down, that they could not tell me what I was going to do, that I had to live it by myself and I was not going to be sorry.

…poor women, they never imagined that in San Pablo the plane was going to be delayed a few hours…

But it was there that the magic began, yes, and I’m not being poetic, it was magical, people started arriving from all over the world, with posters, shirts, material (and as I had done my homework, I recognized some names: GEO, REPEM, UNIFEM, etc.). They embraced, they remembered the last time they had seen each other, some did not know each other, but we were all going to the FISC. The atmosphere had changed, you could breathe it in the air, the atmosphere was different, how? I do not know, different, nice, encouraging, supportive, I don’t know, cool, really cool.

As I already said, I was not sure what for or why I was going to that event, but given that I was going there, I obviously had registered as a VOLUNTEER, what for? You know the answer: I don’t know. But the thing is that on the plane the group of women of ICAE had already recruited me for a thousand tasks, and I was happy, at least I was going to do something, what? … I don’t know…

Remember I told you I left for 4 days, and thankfully I was free on Saturday morning to at least visit Belém? well no, at 7:30 am, my long-awaited Brazilian hotel breakfast just started, those kind women I knew the previous day tell me: XXX, they are waiting for you in university to see if you can lend a hand, go NOW with “B” (B is not to hide her identity, we called her B because her name was too difficult to pronounce). So goodbye breakfast, goodbye mini-tour of Belem: to work.

When we got to the university I see a lot of people with shirts of volunteers running up and down and I introduce myself to a skinny woman – who looked already tired – and I said I was going to help. I will never forget Marc H’s face of happiness, and as she says, she will never forget that someone fell “to help”.

There began the FISC and it was true, the FISC had to be lived, felt, be part of it, I picked a T-shirt, falei meu melhor portugués and comecei a trabalhar, I joined a group of people and started to run: preparing bags, distributing bags, falar com aquel cara que ta precisando ajuda, ayudar a aquél porque le está hablando un inglés y no entiende nada, merci beaucoup, oui, oui, c’est ici, non, non, reste ici, headphones don’t work on channel 1, ¿has visto a Celita? Ou est la toilette?, Where is Ludmila ?, pega-ela, cara!! oui, bien sûr, allez manger, je reste avec le bébé, has anybody seen my shoes??? and amid all that, some wonderful, inspiring chats, fighter, convinced people, wanting to do things, idealistic people, people, many, many people with the most “positive Vibrations” I had ever seen.

Why am I telling you this? Because I lived it from the inside, because I was a volunteer, because without volunteers, without people like the one from ICAE (Adelaide, Nicole, Valerie, Marcela M, Cristina and many others) many things would not be possible. This year I’m also going to something I don’t know very well what it is (that’s not true, I know, when you are touched by ICAE, you become a member of this group of women – sorry, I say of women because ICAE members I know and inspire me are all women) … I went around the bush, I’m telling you this because this year I’m going to MALMÖ, volunteering, and I hope that many, many people will be touched by ICAE and volunteers will increase day after day. This is the best opportunity to do what we preach: from words to action.

EVERYONE can be a VOLUNTEER.

If you want to be a voluntary interpreter at the ICAE World Assembly please contact: icaeinterpreter@gmail.com

Sara Longwe

In 1984, she was a founding member of the Zambia Association for Research and Development, which was instrumental in pushing the government to ratify CEDAW: the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. In 1992, she won a landmark battle against the Lusaka Intercontinental Hotel, which had refused to admit her because she was not accompanied by a man. Zambia’s ratification of CEDAW was part of the basis of the high court’s ruling.

Former chair for the African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), she developed her own gender conceptual analytical tool popularly known as ‘Longwe Women’s Empowerment Framework’ in the global feminist and gender literature. She has used this framework in her numerous consultancies undertaken with African government gender departments, development agencies and civil society organisations on how to identify and address gender issues for sustainable women’s empowerment.

She is a co-laureate of The Hunger Project’s 2003 Africa Prize for Leadership based on her feminist work. A member of the ICAE’s Executive Committee, she will act as convenor – together with Robbie Guevara – for one of the main themes in the upcoming ICAE’s World Assembly to be held in Malmö, Sweden, from 14-17 June: “Lifelong Learning for sustainability in a climate changing world”.

Could you give us a glance on the state of adult education in Africa? What remain, in your opinion, the major challenges?

Let me talk of adult education in Sub-Saharan Africa, with which I am more familiar. With the massive expansions (in most countries) in school education in recent years, we are now seeing a trend away from the situation where adults sought to gain the school qualifications which they had missed when they were in school age. This earlier situation has now been largely superseded by three rather different types of adult education:

I)    An increasing tendency for mature adults to pursue tertiary education, enabled by the expansion of university education and more especially by the development of private universities, open universities and local branches of foreign universities. In other words, much adult education now takes the form of adults who had ‘missed out’ on university education directly they left school, and who now seek university degrees in later life, especially by correspondence or in open universities.

II)    Adults who already have university degrees, but now seek postgraduate qualifications.

III)    An increased trend towards shorter courses in specialized vocational education, especially in the form of workshop training. This may be in courses as short as two or three days, provided by international, government and other development agencies concerned to provide new work orientation and skills for the implementation of new projects and project methods.

What I see as notably missing in these trends is the earlier concern with mass education and grass roots education which was rooted in the earlier emphasis on literacy and numeracy. In many countries it was considered that problems of literacy would naturally be phased out in the older population as successive generations gain literacy from expanded primary education. This has not happened, largely because literacy has ‘fallen away’ from school graduates in poor rural areas where there is virtually nothing to read, and where literacy has little useful social or economic function.

Increasingly the developing trends in adult education are not based on social investment in mass education, but on two more narrow purposes:

I)    The personal advancement of the individual, for wage employment and promotion by obtaining further paper qualifications.

II)    The concern of individual agencies to provide the skills for project implementation.

As I shall discuss later, such adult education aimed at personal advancement does not automatically multiply to form social advancement. Nor, obviously, does it have any focus on addressing particular social or global issues.

The challenge, therefore, is how adult education can address overarching problems such as poverty, unemployment, the marginalisation of women, and climate change. The challenge is how adult education can contribute to the development of more equitable social systems, rather than individual advancement within an existing system which is inequitable.

How would you describe the importance of youth and adult education in the context of gender discrimination in Africa?

The search for personal advantage relative to others may actually be dysfunctional and counterproductive. The result of the pursuit of certificates for employment results in unnecessarily high qualification requirements unrelated to the actual skills needed in the workplace. Even worse, it results in the production of very large numbers of highly educated young people who are unemployable. (We may here take note that this was perhaps the main cause of the current revolutions in North Africa and beyond).

In such a situation, recent trends in adult education do not lead to a solution of the problem of youth unemployment, but merely aggravates the problem. This is only partly a problem of youths who cannot find wage employment. It is equally a problem of youths who cannot find sufficient productive and remunerative self-employment on the land, or in the non-formal sector in town, especially because their education curricula were directed at equipping students for white-collar employment in town.

By comparison with the independence era, most of the youths in Sub-Saharan are now highly educated. More education has not led to higher employment; it has led to the unemployed having much higher levels of education. In this situation, increased adult education for paper qualifications does not lead to more employment, development or prosperity. It merely feeds the arena of fierce competition for higher qualifications, as more and higher certificates compete for the same small number of jobs available.

In this desperate competition, which takes place even amongst the elite class of leaders and managers, as it does amongst wage labour, women tend to get pushed out. They are discriminated against in access to education, and then in access to jobs. Therefore, across all of Sub-Saharan Africa, there is a depressing trend of diminishing proportions of females in successively higher levels of education, and  equally in the higher levels of employment. As women have moved towards parity in the lower levels of schooling, these levels have become increasingly irrelevant for gaining access to wage employment.

It might be thought that the answer to this problem, as far as women are concerned, is to ensure equality of access for women into all levels of education and adult education, and into all levels of employment. In practice, this would mean removing the discriminatory practices presently being used to ensure male preference, for both education and employment, or otherwise to enforce quotas to ensure gender equality until such time as discriminatory practices have been eliminated.

This overlooks two problems. Firstly, from a social point of view, there can be very limited purpose in giving women equal place in an educational system which is presently counterproductive. Secondly, and more fundamentally, in the very patriarchal societies of Sub-Saharan Africa, who is going to remove the discriminatory practices against women?  The answer, of course, is only the women themselves! This means that, in order to get power, they must already have power!

For me, adult education for women means education for freedom. It means collective action to recognize and remove discrimination, as a means towards social and economic equality, and gaining equitable control of resources, and therefore over their own lives.

Similarly, with other general social problems such as poverty and unemployment, adult education can be an essential part of the means towards freedom from oppression, and taking collective action against impoverishment and marginalization (not taking individual action to improve your position at the expense of your neighbour!)

These considerations must return us to the original ideas of Paulo Freire, whose notion of ‘conscientization’ was the process of ideological reorientation which Freire saw as the essential element in adult education. This element is not only basic to literacy education, which was where Freire happened to be practicing, but to all forms of adult education concerned with mass action against oppression and marginalization.

And yet I sometimes read papers on adult education where ‘conscientization’ is referred to as no more than a method for literacy education. Such an approach reduces the work of Freire to nothing. Conscientization is a way of reinterpreting the world, and to better understand your place in it. It is a way of rejecting the given ideology, where the oppressor is represented as benefactor, and instead recognizing the practices of discrimination, oppression and injustice which have caused your poverty and marginalization. Conscientization is not merely a method for literacy education; it is a method, as Freire himself explains, for the ‘practice of freedom’.

There might be more women’s interest in adult education at the grassroots level if women’s adult education were directed at re-interpreting the world of patriarchy and gender discrimination which women have previously been educated to accept, but which they can take action to overturn.

How is your perspective on the follow-up process after CONFINTEA VI?

Following along this train of thought, I see ICAE as being involved in strategic thinking on how we can better promote education for social rather than individual advancement, and on the type of education interventions needed to address pressing global issues at the national and local levels. The problems of discrimination against women provide a good paradigm example for such different thinking, and might make a good starting point for re-thinking adult education on other global issues such as poverty, unemployment and climate change.

But ICAE is a broad coalition of many interests and involvements in adult education. Moreover, we are not an implementing agency, any more than was CONFINTEA VI. We may agree to broad ‘platforms for action’, but we are left with little to do afterwards except to collect data to see how adult education is actually developing in the hands of all the independent actors – international organizations, governments and civil society.

We need to get away from the concept of adult education as a ‘good thing in itself’. As I tried to explain in answer to your first question above, some forms of adult education can be quite useless, even counterproductive, not only to most of the individuals who are educated, but more especially to society as a whole. We need to stop talking about adult education as a ‘good thing in itself’, and instead value adult education in terms of its usefulness as part of a larger strategy for overcoming well defined social and global problems.

What expectations do you have regarding the next ICAE World Assembly in June, particularly in relation to the theme in which you are a Convenor (Lifelong Learning for sustainability in a climate changing world)?

As the Convenor, my job is merely to try to bring out the best in the ideas from those who participate in this Theme at the next World Assembly. Here I see us needing to prise out the different main aspects of the problem of climate change, and from there to see what sort of educational interventions might be directed at saving the human race from impending extinction.

As with my previous example of discrimination against women, climate change has inevitable political dimensions. It is no good trying to pretend that these do not exist, and instead to treat the problem only at the level of technicalities, such as substituting fossil fuels for solar energy. Let me point out some of the political issues which immediately come to mind once we look at the problem of climate change:

I)    People have been educated to believe that they are entitled to consume more resources for a more comfortable life, and that this is a legitimate ambition.
II)    The poor do not take kindly to being told by the rich that they should consume less, or make sacrifices.
III)    Human happiness, in economic theory as in political party manifestos, is defined in terms of increased incomes, public services and private consumption – all involving increased use of resources and energy.
IV)    Governments in democratic countries typically run on four or five year mandates, and their economic promises are consequently also short term. By the same token, it is difficult for any democratic government to commit tax revenue to improvements that will be seen only in 50 or 100 years time. This built in short term perspective means that the political party promising the voter personal benefits by next year is more likely to win an election. This is therefore a system for editing climate change out of the political discussion.
V)    Underlying the above four issues is the belief in a constantly rising Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the main strategy for addressing the problem of poverty. In other words, poverty is to be addressed by constantly increasing the size of the national cake rather than by ensuring more equitable distribution of the present cake. It is this constant quest for increasing GDP, even in countries which are already extremely rich, that provides the engine for blowing more carbon into the atmosphere.

And yet, once we face up to the political problems in addressing climate change, it would seem that education should have an obvious role in addressing these five political issues. Rather like the problem of youth unemployment which I discussed earlier, in climate change we need to look for much more than change of individual behaviour within the present system, even if that might be of some limited use.

Addressing the issue of climate change means addressing problems which exist mainly at the level of society, at the level of governance, and at the level of political power. It is an area where we are looking for collective change in the political and economic system, its values and its aspirations. We are looking for much more than change of individual behaviour within an existing social system. Instead, we are looking for transformation of the social and economic system which has brought the human race to the brink of self-destruction.

And if we don’t think out of the envelope, we’ll soon be out of the universe.

By Enrique Buchichio
ICAE

Could you give us a brief summary of the reasons why is important to have a meeting like this one?

In 2010, DAWN undertook a systematization of our experience in global and regional advocacy as we struggle to secure women’s rights from being eroded by market-based processes and neoliberal policies. And we came up by the time with the conclusion that we are actually in the midst of what we saw was a fierce new world, and this fierce new world is being driven by a global expansion of capitalism and a development model that had privileged rapid growth over everything else. Part of this privileging of rapid growth is the result a narrow and very economistic viewing of what development is about, which we think is leading or has led to the impoverishment of development itself. This process of impoverishing development itself is ongoing in a context where the negative tendencies and disabilities that a growth-led type of development in different places are now manifesting themselves in some kind of an explosion instantaneously and simultaneously, such that even those who thought that they were able to control and manipulate a growth-led type of development, are themselves lost. They have created a monster of a model of development that has not just created problems for the other but had also generated a backlash on those whose political project it was to begin with.

I’m here speaking in DAWN’s perspective, which is the critical political economy of the relations between countries and peoples. I am here talking about the dominion and the traditional power and privileging of the West, or the developed countries. So, we in DAWN realized that, although the concept of the South itself has been destabilized by these various multiple crisis and destabilizations of this fierce new world, we continue to think that when one uses the lens of dominion and power and privileging the dynamics of hierarchy and asymmetries remain as they did in the past, but this time with more risks and uncertainties for many social groups. And within that, because we are DAWN and we advocate for women’s rights and gender equality, we see a very insecure positioning of women’s human rights and women’s aspirations in the context of both the dominant forces as well as the opposing of more progressive views. We are not sure that progressive views that are coming up will automatically integrate or incorporate feminist perspective or women’s rights into their alternative development models and paradigms – in fact, this has not happened.

So we are in this period of extreme uncertainties and risks and we feel that we need to begin a process reaching out to both young feminist women as well as older feminist colleagues in the different parts of the global South – Asia-Pacific, Africa, Latin America – to engage in a conversation on alternative models in the hope of generating or dinamysing a crossed generational positive spirit of women’s movements. Such conversation or events, as this consultation, are really meant to be safe spaces for women’s rights activists and feminists to come together and talk about the tensions and the dilemmas and the challenges not just in the interlinking of gender with economic and ecological justice but also internal to the women’s movement, to the feminist movement in relation to intergeneration and leadership, tension between various perspectives on feminist and ideological standpoints within feminism itself.
We begin the conversation and the discussion from an ethical standard of accepting differences among us and, at the same time, also standing on the principle of respect and being comfortable with contesting ideas rather than to hide differences.

Although DAWN welcomed the recent launch of UN Women, you clearly separated the women’s movement from UN Women. What are the main flaws in the creation of UN Women?

First of all DAWN is one of the organizations to immediately recognize that the UN Women entity is a product of women’s organizations’ long-term lobby with the United Nations (UN). When the UN began to think about reforming the UN so that it will be more effective and efficient, the women’s organizations where there immediately saying that we need to consolidate the disparate and separated bodies addressing gender issues throughout the UN, bringing them together in what we imagined would be a powerful, very influential organization or mechanism within the UN that is headed by no less than an Assistant Secretary-General.

That is the part that we celebrate. But what we also as DAWN are saying is that the UN Women is not us; even if its creation is because of us, it is still a part of the UN. So, in other words, as part of the UN it is an institutional mechanism, it is a particular space, and we, who in effect gave birth to it through our advocacy, need to continue to relate to the UN Women critically as we had related to the entire UN system then as well as now. I think this is a very important perspective and understanding for women to have this, because we in DAWN noticed that immediately after the UN Women was announced nobody, or very few feminists, have dare to raise a critical question about the UN Women. They are saying, well, after all this is what we wanted and now they have given it to us. But we are saying; yes, the UN has responded to our demand but that is a response which is firmly still located within an institution that we need to have a critical engagement with.

¿What are the things that we have noticed about the way the UN Women have been put up? One is that the reality is that the UN Women does not have any committed fund. In fact, the budget for two years of the UN was passed in December, or November last year, without any allocation for a UN Women entity, even while at that time the countries were already negotiating the last features of what would eventually be the one UN Women that was launched in February this year. So there is no funding and the big question is, where will the money come from?

The other thing that we need to watch out for is that even within the UN there is still a confusion on the extent which the one UN Women entity would address both normative as well as operational concerns. If it simply remains at the normative level, then it will engage with international agreements but will not have the capacity to implement direct country programs in effect, which is what the UNIFEM is now doing. So what women’s organizations are saying – including DAWN – is that it is important for UN Women to influence the normative expanding of any agreement within the UN, or even the normative expanding of how the UN as a whole will conduct its work. In addition, we are saying it is equally important for UN Women to have funds to be able to implement on-the-ground projects because these funds in the past – although they are small – have been critical in initializing as well as stimulating women’s activities at the ground level where these interventions matter the most.

The third concern that we have is really the lack of very clear commitment to civil society participation. While Michelle Bachelet, being once the president of a country, is very skillful and should be lauded for her skills on being able to talk to countries and get member States support for UN Women, unfortunately she doesn’t have the same level of skills in relating to social movements, specially women’s rights organizations and networks such as DAWN or the GEO of ICAE. We in DAWN have proposed that there should be some advisory group of civil society or women’s rights organization, but in addition to that we have also proposed that in the thematic areas that the UN Women will eventually adopt as its agenda we should also maintain certain thematic consultative groups in the different regions so that you have a very dynamic and wide-spread progressive and continuing discussion or consultation with women’s organizations. And this is something that we expect from a UN entity that we have asked for, which is a very clear and vibrant link back with the women’s organizations in terms of one UN Women actual operation.

What are the main challenges for DAWN and the women’s movement in 2011?

Clearly the most important challenge to women’s rights organizations is to address the multiple crisis and the multiple issues in an interlinked way, and this is precisely what our regional consultation is about. We are stimulating a critical way of looking at – and responding to – crisis from an interlinked perspective. At this moment, in response to global processes that are coming up in the next years, it is important that women’s organizations are able to link our perspective on gender and economic justice with ecological justice. The Rio+20 process is a very important process, a very important moment where all social movements, including women’s rights organizations, can present an alternative for sustainable development. We can not longer, as recent events had shown (the tragedy in Japan, the recurrent financial crisis, the shifting of grounds in terms of political certainties, the massive changes that are happening in the Middle East and, included in this configuration also the backlash reaction on women’s rights and sexual rights from neo-conservatives and fundamentalists). What we need for women’s organizations is to be able to come up with our proposals for alternatives, for a different type of perspective on development and complete them with other possible policies and strategies that could be realized at the global as well as regional and national levels.

The thing with DAWN, which may set us apart from other women’s rights organizations that also carry a very critical stand on neoliberal model of development, is that DAWN thinks that it is important for some groups – and that includes us – to continue engaging with the UN, because we can see everywhere that very valiant and progressive initiatives at the local and national levels could easily be overturned by a hostile global environment in trade or an institutional environment in monetary and finance. So we think that it is important to fight in all fronts and all spheres and that, for a small organization like DAWN, we have opted to continue engaging with the UN but also to engage in non-institutional processes.

As a member of the GEO, will you have a particular gender position at the ICAE’s World Assembly in June?

As far as education is concern, everybody will agree that education is a continuing process, it is a permanent process of educating everybody, including ourselves. But in addition to that, the feminists within the GEO and in ICAE also say that education has to be inclusive and that it has to educate men and women to move beyond the patriarchal mind-sets and mentality. A truly sustainable education, or an education for a sustainable future, cannot be but an education that is also non-sexist, that is inclusive, that respect diversity, sexual diversity, different types of identities, and that will be based on a respect for processes where differences and contestations are embraced, and are dealt with in a respectful way, in a way that – and this is very important for feminists – is safe for everybody. That is something which we have to address and, in fact, there have been some moments in past ICAE conferences where there have been self-censorship on the part of progressive educators because of a feeling of uncertainty about their personal safety.

Number two, the co-leadership of women and men in ICAE needs to be continuously nurtured. I think that the GEO caucus on formation needs to be preserved and continued. Patriarchy after all is an underpinning structure and, in some cases, there are resurgent patriarchies, particularly in situations where we least expect patriarchal reactions to emerge, including from some women. So a permanent commission or permanent groups such as the GEO, within ICAE, continues to be relevant for the organization.

I also want to say that I have a very strong feeling of solidarity with the people and social movements and activists in Latin America, so I will continue to support the Secretary being here in Latin America, especially when – as Latinos and Latinas say – it is a special moment in the region

By Enrique Buchichio
ICAE

One of the main tasks during the upcoming ICAE VIII World Assembly, to be held in Malmö, Sweden, from 14-17 June will be to assure a good and efficient translation in order to facilitate communication between participants from different parts of the world. Voluntary interpreters will be available adding their solidarity in everyone’s benefit. To know more details about this we talked with Carolina Clavier, who will be one of the event’s translators.

How many interpreters will be working and how are you preparing yourselves for the ICAE World Assembly?
We don’t know yet the exact number of voluntary interpreters that will be working at the event; we are various who signed already from different parts of the world and we hope that many more will join us in the coming days. It is very important that everyone who can offer voluntary interpretation could join us since there are always unexpected situations in an event like this. Preparation in itself is very easy, personally I’m following the virtual assembly (seminar), which helps me in knowing every subject that will be addressed; it is also very helpful to read some documents (all available on the ICAE website) on Millennium Goals, the FISC, CONFINTEA VI.

What languages will you be translating and how many activities will be covered by voluntary interpreters?
We will be working in four languages: Sweden, French, English and Spanish. During plenaries will be always interpretation in those four languages; during the parallel activities will also be translation, although it will not be always possible to have the four languages available, but we do are foreseeing that we can all participate in as many events as possible. In other words, at any time will be an event in one of the four said languages. Besides, we as voluntary interpreters will be clearly identified, so if any participant wants to attend a specific event which is not translated in his or her language, that person can approach any of the interpreters and ask for assistance at the moment. It is also very important to have into account that although during the event the four languages will be covered, help from any other interpreter in other languages (for instance, Portuguese) would be very valuable since we are expecting to have a really diverse attendance.

Is it usual to have this kind of voluntary interpretation in civil society events? Why do you think is important to have this kind of solidarity in an event like the Assembly?
Absolutely. In this kind of events, as well as in forums and meetings it is very usual to have voluntary interpreters. Personally, I think that this kind of event has a very special atmosphere where volunteering and solidarity play a very important role. To be in the same place with people from all over the world, at the same time, addressing issues of common interest and being a living part of this process is a very gratifying experience. The fact of being able to participate in an event called “A world worth living in” is in itself enriching and enjoyable; it is indescribable to be an active part and to really make a contribution; that actually is “from rhetoric to action”. At the same time, voluntary interpretation also has a counterpart which is the attendance; for us to be able to do a good job we need the cooperation and patience from everyone and the support from organizers and participants as well.

If you want to be a voluntary interpreter at the ICAE World Assembly please contact: icaeinterpreter@gmail.com