UNESCO and ONIE support 8 pilot projects to teach living heritage and sustainable development in non-formal and informal education

UNESCO and Office of Non-formal and Informal Education (ONIE), with support from ICHCAP, have collaborated in a two-year project, ‘Promoting Sustainable Development and Safeguarding Living Heritage through Non-formal and Informal Education in Thailand’ (2021–22). The project aims to empower teachers at ONIE centres across the country in using ICH as a teaching and learning tool, developing skills in course designing for life skills and multi-literacies, and linking culture to sustainable development.

In 2021, UNESCO organized a training for ONIE teachers on integrating intangible cultural heritage in non-formal and informal education, and announced the call for proposals to pilot teachers’ own designs of lesson plans or modification of existing subjects that use ICH in teaching and learning. The selected lesson plans or subjects will be piloted at the submitting ONIE centres in 2022. The pilot results will be showcased at the International Literacy Day event, which is a national-level celebration by ONIE, in 2022.

The pilot activities in 2022 provide an opportunity for ONIE teachers to show their capacities in analyzing and improving ONIE’s existing subjects, and creating new subjects that better reflect diverse local perspectives toward sustainable development – environmental, social and economic – which could lead to more tangible impacts on the livelihoods of people in the present and in the future.

On top of the funding support (THB 30,000 per pilot site) provided to the piloting, the juries of the project also gave special awards to congratulate different aspects of excellent course designing that answer to the spirit of UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and ONIE’s mandate in sustainable development and innovative learning (THB 20,000 per award). The selected ONIE centres and their proposals are:

Original article published on UNESCO Bangkok