Report on Education for Sustainable Development Training of Trainers Workshop

Abstract

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is a vision of education that seeks to empower people to assume responsibility for creating a sustainable future. It has been acknowledged that there is no 'single route' to sustainable develop- ment. Further, it is coherent that understanding of and visions for sustainability will be different for each of us and that we will need to work together to negotiate the process of achieving sustainability. It is against this background that a work- shop for trainers was organized, to empower participants with skills to train other teachers on the concepts of ESD. Participants shared experiences of promoting ESD in their schools/colleges and developed materials for mainstreaming ESD in Ugandan schools. The workshop brought together participants from different institutions and schools. Each of these actors has a different vision of sustainable development. Some are interested in environmental preservation and protection; some have economic development interests while others may be more interested in social development. How each individual, school/institution views sustainable develop- ment will depend on its values. The values held in a society help define how per- sonal decisions are made. These were the issues discussed in the workshop. The challenge is to bring these different stakeholders together so that they may collaborate in partnership to find a balance between their interests and priorities. Various approaches discussed in the workshop encouraged people to under- stand the complexities of and synergies between the issues threatening planeta- ry sustainability, and understand and assess their own values and those of the society in which they live. Another workshop was organized in Mbale in September/October 2008, to intro- duce teachers to the concepts of ESD and share experiences on existing activi- ties and programmes. This workshop was a follow up activity of the Mbale work- shop. This report therefore presents the proceedings of the second ESD workshop and starts with the introduction of ESD and then provides a background to the work- shop. It presents the purpose of the workshop, workshop objectives, opening re- marks and different workshop presentations. It ends with the resolutions that were drawn in the workshop. One of the resolutions is to train students, staff, and administrators using internal and external seminars.