INEE Global Consultation Photos
Posted: 26/04/09
You can view photos taken during the INEE Global Consultation 2009 here.
A New Form of Leadership: Hope for Education for All
Posted: 07/04/09
Michael Gibbons, INEE Member and Consultant, describes how the INEE network buttresses the efforts of practitioners working towards Education For All:
I continue to be inspired by our actions, our progress, our energy and commitment as a world community as expressed through the INEE network, a remarkable commons for collective exchange and action on behalf of our 70+ million children out of school.
I made a choice several years ago to work independently as opposed to being an officer of a large international organization in order to provide myself the flexibility to work on child rights and the right to education in ways I felt were best – I traded freedom and flexibility for a drastic reduction of institutional clout. I rely on social networks developed over a 30-year career in basic education and development to remain engaged and find opportunities to contribute. INEE membership is perhaps the most powerful of these networks I rely on because it is self-aware/self-critical, inclusive, catalytic, strategic, powerfully positioned, intelligently focused and it offers a myriad of ways for determined individuals and organizations to make meaningful contributions in concert with others to important Education for All (EFA) policy, knowledge-building, capacity-strengthening and programmatic lines of action.
I believe deeply that the world will benefit from new forms of leadership that are less hierarchical, less centered on wielding power, less “male”, and more inclusive, distributed, focused on shared-cooperative capacity. INEE embodies this type of leadership and seeks to be ever more like this vision of leadership-by-all. This is another reason I treasure my association with INEE.
The INEE consultation which concluded April 2 in Istanbul indicates that much urgent work on several key dimensions of the “underserved” aspects of the EFA agenda is moving ahead, has champions solidly behind it, and requires more effort and more support. These dimensions include:
- Keeping EFA advocacy attention on the most underserved populations and weakest-capacity national systems
- Focusing attention on “the teacher” as the lynch-pin of expanded access and improved quality
- Articulating and reinforcing evidence of the fundamental role of education and human capacity development in promoting human rights, mitigating disasters, enhancing stability and fostering development
- Integrating/harmonizing approaches to EFA across humanitarian, fragility/ stability and development areas of policy and action
- Fostering dialogue and cooperation among education Ministries, donor agencies, INGOs, local activists, researchers and other types of actors committed to EFA
- Encouraging thoughtful efforts to document emerging knowledge about ways education can work in extremely difficult circumstances
Two final thoughts – First: In keeping with INEE’s vision and core values and hearing all the strands of discussion this past week in Istanbul, I see a compelling argument to re-orient the focus (and perhaps change the name) of the INEE Education and Fragility Working Group around the notion of “Education, Resilience and Stability” – in other words, defining the purpose of the WG not as ‘problem-solving for education re the current problem of fragility’, but rather promoting education as a transformative vehicle of personal and community resilience contributing to national stability. We know this WG focuses on what the donor community currently calls the geo-political problem of “state fragility”, but we can define our stance viz a viz this phenomenon in keeping with our own values and vision that education can and should be transformative.
Second: As I listened to the powerful reflection messages of our final plenary panelists and align those messages with the framing structure in Peter’s ‘donor architecture map’ from the first day, I begin to see an interesting circle of convergence taking shape in my mind. In the EFA world, the drive is on to push through expanded access among the poor to address large-scale quality and system stability to fuel development. In the humanitarian/security world, we are moving from a focus on access during crises to education preparedness and mitigation of crises, peace education, mainstreaming innovations and building back better to foster social and state stability. As we engage with Ministries of Education and systems of teacher formation and support around the education-in-emergencies issues, can this new impulse fruitfully integrate into other mainstream EFA efforts in the final six-year push toward the MDG/EFA goals? I harbor hopes that, as the vibrant INEE network within the wider EFA family, we can.
INEE is Our Network
Posted: 06/04/09
Eric Eversmann, Senior Technical Advisor, Education for Catholic Relief Services USA, reflects on INEE’s evolution:
As I write this, the INEE world that descended on Istanbul this past week is winding down. The Global Consultation is over, the task teams have met, the language communities have convened, and the working groups have worked over all the information that came out of the consultation. Only the members of the Steering Group and Secretariat are still going: locked up in a hotel on Istiklal Caddesi, considering all our feedback and priorities.
The meeting’s size and diversity made it hard to identify over-arching themes. Actually, in the end, maybe ‘size’ and ‘diversity’ are the big themes. I was struck by the changes in the network and its members over the past four years. It has grown exponentially and with that growth has come a greater confidence in what it can do, as well as an increasing sense of ownership among the membership – the sense that INEE is first and foremost our network.
There were also more people from different places involved. Governments, youth, researchers and specialists from related fields, such as early childhood development and disaster risk reduction, were all much more in evidence. Their presence served to constantly remind us of the dynamic world of practitioners, partners, colleagues and rights holders alongside whom we work.
In all of these positive developments, there are two things that I think it is important for us to remember. First, that this is our network and therefore the burden of energy and effort to move forward those things that we are passionate about rests primarily with us. Putting forward our ideas at the Global Consultation is one thing, but following up on them is another. The second is that we are strongest when we work together. This requires us to focus and find consensus around our priorities in order to continue to be effective.
For the Minimum Standards, the INEE initiative that I have worked most closely with, the lessons from the global consultation will be a key part of the work going forward. The update of the standards will be strengthened by including the wide range of actors who attended the global consultation. At the same time, it will require focus and the continued engagement of us all.
In the coming months, look for an online questionnaire to contribute your recommendations for the update of the Minimum Standards. And if you are interested in staying engaged, think about joining one of the reference groups, which will lead the update in key areas such as gender. I will be there and also thinking of what amazing part of the INEE world I want to be part of next.
Edited to add: The INEE Minimum Standards Update Online Consultation has now been launched. Click here to add your voice.
Talking Early Childhood
Posted: 05/04/09
Mike Feigelson is a Programme Officer and an Acting Programme Manager at the Bernard van Leer Foundation in the Netherlands and member of the INEE Early Childhood Task Team.
On the last night of the consultation, I went out to dinner with some of the organizers (fantastic job by the way!) and a few participants. At the end of the night I went to shake hands with one of the other guests. She stopped me, pushed my hand a way and gave me a hug… “now you’re part of the INEE family,” she said.
This sense of an intensely committed and intimately knit family is what most struck and impressed me at the consultation (that and the way everyone sat up straight the moment Mary Mendenhall stood at the podium ☺).
That said, I was left wishing that the ECD community were a more fundamental piece of the INEE family. I could see great strides were made in this sense and the appointment of Mary Moran from CCF to the INEE Steering Group is heartening in and of itself. But, I am still left wanting to see a more compelling articulation of the experiences of young children within the INEE agenda.
So, some thoughts on what that might look like before I return to the stack of documents, which have piled up in my inbox over the week in Turkey:
- Maybe it means that when we track resource allocation for conflict-affected countries we see a number for the ECD subsector (thankfully numbers, unlike people, can be easily seen even when they are small)
- Maybe it means that researchers consider the way the ECD programmes (which support a strong social and emotional foundation) are not only good for young children, but can simultaneously optimize the impact of other common educational programmes by mobilizing women and girls…
- Maybe it means wondering what it means that the youngest children are forming their worldviews based on a world of violence…
And for the ECDers out there…I think David Skinner (Director for Save the Children’s Rewrite the Future) pointed out the critical question to consider. What is the compelling, MDG-like outcome that can help explain to people what this is all about?
Photo: Louise Zimanyi, Director of the Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development speaking during the Closing Plenary session
A New Member of the Growing INEE Family
Posted: 03/04/09
Prof. Qasem Alnewashi, Education Technical Advisor at the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in the Middle East shares his thoughts and experiences about the 3rd day of the 2009 Global Consultation in Istanbul:
On this Thursday, while the INEE Global Consultation aims at bridging the gaps currently affecting education in emergency, leaders of the G20 countries agreed to kick-start the world economy by pulling together billion-dollar plans to save banking systems in crisis. Is there a link between the two emergencies? At least our Consultation conclusions should highlight the extent of global inequality in educational opportunity which will give the G20 leaders pause for thought when they recognize that approx. 75 million children are out of school worldwide, most of them in conflict-affected countries.
While I am a newcomer to the INEE growing family, I have an interest in most of the concurrent sessions, but I cannot attend all… so I found myself somewhat lost! But during the lunch and coffee breaks I tried to catch up through my colleagues who attended sessions of my interest and discussed with them the questions that I would like to have answered. It was exciting to hear a lot of invaluable thought and suggestions on what needs to be updated in the INEE Minimum Standards. In the session “INEE MS: What Are the Next Steps?”, the presenters explained how every single aspect is taken into consideration in order to make the MS fit to all purposes and contexts. For example, Jennifer Sklar indicated in her presentation that even the format of the INEE MS handbook is taken into deep consideration to support their use by varying contexts and stakeholders.
The closing plenary was very informative and chaired by an exiting facilitator, Mr. Peter Buckland, Lead Education Specialist from the World Bank. The speakers reflected upon their practices and the key findings that emerged during the two and half days of the INEE Global Consultation, and they also focused their comments on the priorities for collective action and the gaps that remain to be bridged. Among all the representations in the closing panel, I would like to focus on the interesting case study of INEE as a network conducted by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), in which a young intellectual, Simon Hearn highlighted the INEE’s forms and functions, strengths and challenges, and made some recommendations for the network’s continued development as a collaborative community and how to promote a dynamic membership to advocate the field of education in emergency.
Away from the regular agenda of the Consultation, this event shortened, at least to me, distances and times! I conducted meetings with people who are in my agenda and I might need several months and thousands of dollars to organize such meetings. In these meetings with colleagues from different agencies whom I had never met in person, I put names to faces. We put together our plans and strategies for next steps. For example, an interesting meeting, during a coffee break, with Prof. Christopher Talbot on the Certification of Iraqi Refugees in the Middle East. The discussion led us to plan for a joint IRC-UNESCO-UNHCR-UNICEF workshop to complete, as an obligation, the task that our colleague Jackie Kirk (who passed away tragically in Afghanistan) had planned to carry out in the region.
Among countless positive remarks regarding the Consultation, I would like to suggest that if it is possible for future events to ensure that a representative participation, presentations, and speakers to cover the different regions around the world, as I noticed that most of the activities are selected from Africa and east Asia, but for example very little from the Middle East. Also, I do support the idea of considering more participation of the governmental entities in the Network, focusing mainly on the countries where tensions are there.
At the end of the exciting day, I joined the Arabic Language Community meeting, in which the members got to know each other for the first time, at least for me. We discussed intensively the community achievements during the last year, including the re-translation of theINEE MS into Arabic including the re-translation. The facilitator, Mr. Mustafa Osman from Islamic Relief led the discussion related to the communication issues and the brainstorming for the way forward and the coming action points.
Finally, given the critical importance of education in emergencies and the urgent gaps and challenges highlighted in the Consultation, several actions are crucial to consider: higher education institutions should include education in emergency as a profession within their academic and research programs. And governments, NGOs and UN agencies should include education in emergencies as a relief measure and more sustained attention to and it within basic relief assistance through to recovery.
Too Busy for Lunch
Posted: 03/04/09
As the Consultation draws to a close Carl Triplehorn, Independent Consultant, blogs of meeting new and old colleagues
I just shoved my conference badge into my computer bag and am rushing out to see the Blue Mosque before my plane tomorrow. The badge is shoved next to my uneaten sandwich, business cards from new colleagues, the crumpled conference brochure and my scruffy notebook. I don’t think I have eaten a full lunch during the whole conference as I have been busy catching up with old friends and meeting new people between sessions in the hallways. The conference badges have been invaluable to seek out people whose work I had read or whose programs I had heard of and tell them how I had benefited from their work. In the last session, I struck by how freely people felt to give and receive criticism. Some of the most critical were the youth representatives who constantly reminded us that despite all of the work of INEE and its members that the vast educational needs remain unmet. My conference badge and uneaten lunch will eventually end up the garbage at hotel. The business cards will be input on my computer on the plane. My scruffy note book will be on my desk for follow up people to contact and ideas to write, further expanding the INEE family. Now that I think about it I hope my notebook doesn’t smell from having squashed my uneaten sandwich. (What about my computer!)
My Favorite Moments at the Global Consultation
Posted: 02/04/09
Yahoko Asai, Education Programme Officer (Basic Education and Gender Equality) for UNICEF Eritrea and member of the INEE Task Team on Inclusive Education and Disability reflects on some of her favorite sessions and speeches:
I am really excited to be here, for the first time participating in the Global Consultation. Why? First, the Global Consultation brought 270 colleagues from around the world. While it is a small number considering the total number of INEE members of more than 3,400, it is still a big number, providing me with a wonderful opportunity to meet various people – old friends, classmates and teachers at the Masters Degree, colleagues from the same organization I am now working with, practitioners from the countries where I have worked, and of course many more new people with different and interesting backgrounds and solid expertise. I can finally put some familiar names I have known only from the papers, books or emails to faces. Especially, being a member of the Inclusive Education and Disability Task Team, it was really a pleasure to meet the team members who are truly experienced and committed to advance inclusion in education in emergencies. INEE is indeed a network of people.
Second, it is exciting to hear a lot of inspiring insights as well as new issues/agenda from our colleagues in every plenary and working session. Let me highlight the comment from Ginny Kintz in the morning plenary session which I found simple but very concrete and important, and thus I want to always keep in mind. She argued that sometimes our attentions are paid more to technical aspects of education in areas affected by disasters, such as how to construct schools and how to conduct teacher trainings. However, she suggested that we should not forget to think about why – why education is important in disaster- or conflict- affected contexts, because this question allows us to have a holistic approach in interventions.
Another exciting topic discussed in one of today’s working sessions would be, I believe, also of interest of all INEE members: Updating the INEE Minimum Standards. Briefly, the update is to reflect developments in the field of education in emergencies (such as the IASC Education Cluster), to make the Minimum Standards more user-friendly and to incorporate the experiences of users of the Minimum Standards. The process has just started here in Istanbul and will continue into early 2010, in parallel with the revision of the Sphere Standard. INEE members, get ready to share your insights and get involved!
Women’s Refugee Commission Youth Advisory Group Participates in the Global Consultation
Posted: 01/04/09
Members of the Women’s Refugee Commission Youth Advisory Group (YAG) have been active particpants at the INEE Global Consultation in Istanbul. They have shared their experiences of growing up in conflict, and what they—and other young people—are doing to rebuild their communities and make recommendations to decision-makers to better support young people.
Two of the YAG members were selected by INEE to speak at the opening and closing plenary sessions along with senior UN and government officials. All YAG members participated in a learning session on strategies to address the educational and skills building needs of displaced youth organized by the Women’s Refugee Commission, Norwegian Refugee Council and INEE’s Adolescent and Youth Task Team.
The Youth Advisory Group (YAG) comprises 15 young women and men (age 18-27) from various conflict-affected countries around the world. The members provide ongoing feedback and guidance to the Displaced Youth Initiative. The members, who come from Afghanistan to Burma to Uganda to Sri Lanka, were nominated and selected to participate based on their experience addressing youth-related issues in their communities.
This is the first opportunity for all YAG members to come together in person and participate in a strategic planning meeting. Advocacy training for all YAG members formed a core part of the three-day retreat as requested by the members.
YAG members have been blogging about their experiences in Istanbul. Read their entries on the Women’s Refugee Commission’s blog
Let’s Dance! Impressions from Day 1 of the Global Consultation
Posted: 01/04/09
Gary Ovington, Senior Emergency Specialist, Education at the Asia-Pacific Shared Services Centre (APSSC), UNICEF, Thailand speaks of his experiences today in Istanbul
The long-awaited 3rd INEE Global Consultation kicked off this morning in Istanbul with a fascinating mix of in vivo and video presentations. At risk of losing friends, though not face, I would like to single out two presentations from the welcome and opening plenary that particularly touched my heart. They touched my heart, I suspect, partly because they were spoken from the heart (as indeed were a number of presentations), but also because they were born of personal suffering.
The first, from the seemingly ageless and peerless Desmond Tutu, whose measured and eloquent speech drew particular attention to conflict in the contemporary world and how it was preventing 40 million children from attending school. Two messages that struck a deep chord for me were: invest in people, invest in children; and we need to teach children to love and not to hate. Such simple messages, too oft forgotten.
The second was from Khin Htway who delivered an impassioned and heartfelt plea from the perspective of a young woman denied her dreams and her basic rights to tertiary education. Truly, a remarkable effort from a young woman who learnt English only five years ago and a wonderful example to us all.
I felt that almost all the speakers gave a personal touch and for me this set a tone which I hope we can follow throughout the next three days. Too often we attend professional gatherings that leave a slightly clinical taste in my mouth. It’s good to be reminded that within those gruesome statistics are faces, feelings, live flesh and blood beings whose lives have often been an endless saga of suffering and despair. Let’s not forget: education in emergencies is much more than a matter of academic interest.
The second plenary brought together the vastly different yet equally pleasing styles of Peter Buckland, Marla Petal and Allison Anderson. Peter brought us humour (and a bit of literary flair with his architectural metaphors), Marla brought us passion from the critical field of disaster prevention (Marla tells us that risk reduction is out; let’s raise the bar) and finally Allison, our INEE leader, helped us remember why we are now 3,400 members, how much we have grown.
I must confess that after the plenaries I was a little disappointed with the two learning sessions I attended. Not because there was a shortage of good information and good speakers, but because I felt the smaller numbers in these sessions allowed for interaction on a scale not possible in the larger plenaries, they allowed for a little innovation in methodology. Yet I was treated to a series of traditional speeches, mostly with powerpoints (a very overrated technology!) followed by questions and answers, comments and observations. My heart craved for a little genuine adult learning methodology. Come on team, let’s dance together!
A Recovering Psychologist Gives her Thoughts
Posted: 01/04/09
Ragnhild Dybdahl, Director of Education and Research Department at the Norwedian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) shares her experiences of the first day of presentations and workshops in Istanbul:
I found all the sessions I attended today interesting and inspiring. Those who know me will know that this is not obvious. This is the first time I attend a consultative meeting and I find the meeting of practitioners, academics, policy makers, donors refreshing. Peter Buckland’s areal overview of the aid architecture with its many acronyms and boxes explains why this is a map that is hard to grasp – and that the difference between the areal overview and the real world is often vast. His comments that the map of the aid architecture was not planned by an architect, but perhaps by a town planner, and what it shows is not really a town, but rather an informal settlement, were much appreciated. However, the relationship between the many parts of the global architecture on global and country levels were clarifying, and the increased significance of NGOs and the more proactive role of donors in the shaping of the architecture during the last ten years were interesting.
The presentation on school safety by Marla Petal was powerful, showing not only that disasters impact on education, but that prevention is possible.” It’s a technical field, but it’s not rocket science”. What we often call natural hazards such as floods, wind, earthquakes, drought, and tsunami lead to about 400 national disasters, an average of 74,000 deaths and more than 230 million people affected every single year. Thousands of children and teachers have died in school buildings, schools are destroyed and education disrupted. Disasters have physical, educational, economic and psychosocial impacts. Our task is to make every school a safe school. As a recovering psychologist (almost quoting Peter Buckland who claims to be a recovering bureaucrat), I particularly appreciated that she stressed that making schools safe is fundamental to psychosocial recovery. This linked well into the welcome address and opening statement by Prof Arslan, from the Turkish Ministry of Education. A civil ingeneer with a sound practical approach that fits the conference and speaking of Turkey’s experience (with one major earthquake every eight months), he illustrated well the importance of planning, preparedness and quake resistance of buildings before crisis, as well as the impact on schooling during and after earthquakes – and the importance of resuming schooling as soon as possible, not only for learning purposes but to give structure and meaning in difficult times.
Also being a recovering academic, I suppose my favourite topics for discussion in the coffee breaks were about research needs. I thought the role of solid rigorous needs assessment, evaluation and monitoring was spoken of with more urgency and sincerity than I have heard in most other contexts. I found the expressed need for good research and the possibility to carry out research, even in difficult circumstances, encouraging. The session on researching education an protection in humanitarian emergencies (1/7) chaired by Lesley Bartlett sharing findings, methods and challenges from Afghanistan, Darfur and several African countries was particularly impressive and inspiring. The presenters showed that it is possible to carry out research in these settings and gather observational data, not only self-report, and even carry out a large randomized controlled study in Afghanistan as presented by Dana Burde. Although there is no doubt that the ethical, logistical and methodological challenges are enormous, the need for solid research where we have a chance to look at effects, causality and working factors becomes clearer and clearer to me – partly to investigate the possible harm that we do. There is a lot to learn about how we can manage to create partnerships to enable us to do this type of research from the presenters in this session, as well as from the participants at the conference.
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