MOJA

MOJA invites adult educators to a conversation with Astrid von Kotze, adult educator and activist. Astrid is and education activist working with organisations and people in poor working class communities in/around Cape Town, South Africa. Until 2009, she was Professor of Adult Education and Community Development at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, subsequently professor emerita at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Astrid has been deeply involved in cultural activism, and published widely on popular education, health and sustainable livelihood security.

In the conversation with Astrid, we will focus on the topic of Adult Education for Resilience? COVID-19-induced pondering for practice.

Resilience has become a buzzword ‘touted as a protective talisman against the effects of trauma, which individuals, communities and whole economies are told to cultivate. ‘ (Saner 2020) It has taken on the quality of moral virtue with ‘resourcefulness’ reframed as praise for one’s ability to continually adapt (Ames & Greer 2021). In this way, resilience is akin to the aspiration for education for ‘sustainable development’, a continuation of the same-old, with slight adjustments.

The questions are: what does ‘resilience’ mean? Should adult education go with the same-old? What are community/adult educators’ assumptions, and how do they relate to the realities of learner / participants on the ground? What ideas should be dropped, and what imaginings be taken on now, for the future? What are new ways of shaping adults educating and learning, in a (post-) Covid-era?

This webinar will critically examine notions of ‘resilience’, spotlight some of our assumptions about ALE, and propose a a life-affirming adult education for the future.

On 12 and 13 October 2021, EPALE is hosting its annual Community Conference, which will be held entirely online. The conference will provide an opportunity to discuss how adult education and learning can help reshape our society, promoting inclusive and sustainable models.

The pandemic has exposed and exacerbated vulnerabilities in our globalised and interconnected world, with profound and long-lasting effects. Fast-paced changes on multiple levels – digital, demographic, and environmental – have been the norm in recent times. In this context, the conference revolves around the concept of transition. Transitions are full of uncertainty and instability, but being inherently transformative, they also provide an extraordinary opportunity to sketch out new models, paying particular attention to the challenge of not leaving anyone behind.

The conference’s plenary sessions (public events available to view via the EPALE platform) will be split across two days.

But the conference doesn't end here!

Far from it! The following week, on the 18 and 19 October, the conference will continue, opening the stage for collaborative discussions. Participants will have the opportunity to have their say, taking part in four participatory workshops to be attended upon registration.

The EPALE Community Conference will also host 8 national panels to allow participants to deepen and discuss national priorities and practices… in national languages.

The full agenda will be available soon on this page.

TOPIC: Neville Alexander and the Struggle for Education, Nation-Building and Liberation

Prof Salim Vally - Faculty of Education, University of Johannesburg; Director: Centre for Education Rights and Transformation; NRF SARChi Chair in Community, Adult and Workers Education

Mr Enver Motala - Research Associates Nelson Mandela University

It is with great honor that we invite educators, activists, environmentalists, students to join us in the 4th edition of this free course in defense of public education, public and free healthcare systems, and social rights for all. Let's celebrate the Centenary of Paulo Freire denouncing the necrophilic politics across the globe and announcing concrete possibilities of transformation. The course purpose is to discuss pedagogical practices in Environmental Education in formal and non-formal contexts, emerging from popular struggles, social movements, traditional populations, indigenous peoples and groups in situations of socio-environmental vulnerability...

Access the link on Google Chrome and activate the automatic translations for English version!

Dates: 09/25 to 10/30

Synchronous activities: 09/25; 10/02; 10/09; 10/16; 10/23; 10/30 - (6 Saturdays). 3:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. (Eastern time)

Texts and videos will be available in Portuguese, Spanish and English.

The synchronous activities will be broadcast on YouTube in Portuguese language, and subsequently will be inserted English and Spanish subtitles.

https://youtube.com/channel/UCLu5JM46V79_qSapQ7Hsu1A

Climate justice, including social, gender and economic justice, is attained by foregrounding the needs and interests of the people who have contributed least to climate catastrophes yet are most affected by them. Due to unequal patriarchal divisions of labour and exploitative practices, the majority of women around the world carry primary responsibility for putting food on the table and taking care of ecosystems, families and communities. Ecological breakdown, capitalism and patriarchy are closely inter-linked and undergird the environmental catastrophe that is unfolding. Ecofeminism, a discourse that began in the late 1980s, remains a useful theoretical framework because it refuses to separate entangled dimensions of life. It presents a change in paradigm from separation to interconnectedness, from the mechanistic and reductionist to the relational and holistic. This webinar will explore ecofeminism – its theory and practice - and in particular, its application to the principles and practices of a life-affirming ALE.

This year is the 100th anniversary of Paulo Freire's birth, and we are marking it with an online conference in October 2021. This will be an opportunity for academics, practitioners and activists to share their ideas, learning and practice with their peers.

UNESCO, Regional Office of Southern Africa, is hosting International Literacy Day celebrations 2021 under the theme ‘Literacy for a human-centred recovery: Narrowing the digital divide’. The regional event will take place on Friday 10^th September 2021 from 10:00 until 12:00.

This year’s celebrations are taking place amidst the new Youth and Adult Literacy strategy for the period 2020-2025. The main goal of the strategy is to guide UNESCO’s work towards supporting Member States in ‘ensuring that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy by 2030’, as captured in SDG Target 4.6. The strategy also intends to contribute indirectly to achieving other SDGs with four strategic priority areas,which are:

• Supporting Member States in developing national literacy policies and strategies;
• Addressing the learning needs of disadvantaged groups, particularly women and girls;
• Leveraging digital technologies to expand access and improve learning outcomes; and
• Monitoring progress and assessing literacy skills and programmes.

Objectives

The objectives of the regional webinar are to:

• share knowledge and experiences regarding equitable, inclusive and effective distance and digital literacy learning for youth and adults with no or low literacy skills
• explore the interplay between literacy and digital skills and the ways in which digital skills can be effectively integrated into literacy teaching and learning, and
• identify main issues to be addressed for reimagined distance and digital literacy learning that can contribute to fulfilling the right to literacy of all young people and adults in times of COVID-19 and beyond, and
• celebrate the winning of the 2021 UNESCO - King Sejong Literacy prize for mother language based literacy development in the Southern Africa region by Puku for Children’s Literature Foundation, South Africa.

The 12th International Researching Work & Learning Conference (RWL12) will take place at the University of Toronto, July 13-15, 2022.

The conference aims to bring leading researchers together to explore contributions to theory, policy and practice revolving around our main theme of Work, Learning & Social Change face-to-face and online.

Please explore our conference sub-themes to see the many ways your work can make a contribution. We invite your proposal submissions and hope you will join us at RWL12.

Please note that, as always, we continue to monitor the effects of the pandemic in light of our goal of successfully bringing together our international research community.