Joint efforts for adult learning and education – UIL, ICAE and DVV International agree on closer coordination

"Education is a human right" – based on this fundamental assumption, the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL), the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE) and DVV International want to coordinate their work more closely in the future. 

This is the result of a first meeting between the new Director of the UIL, Isabell Kempf, who has been in office since January 2024, Katarina Popovic and Per Hansen from ICAE and Uwe Gartenschlaeger, Director of DVV International. 

At the meeting on 20 February in Hamburg, the participants discussed, among other things, how global formats such as the World Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA), which takes place every 12 years, or the process for achieving the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can be used more effectively to ensure greater attention and support for adult learning and education (ALE). 

Participants agreed that ALE has a central role to play in green and digital transformation, but can also help combat social upheaval and discrimination.

In future, ALE is to be jointly promoted at municipal level in the framework of the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities, which was launched by UIL in 2013. There are also plans to utilise the UN human rights mechanism to enforce the human right to education more effectively. Furthermore, DVV International and UIL want to coordinate their lobbying work in Germany more closely in order to emphasise the importance of ALE in international cooperation.

UIL, ICAE and DVV International have already been working together for many years on various topics and different projects and global processes. Among other things, they have published the updated version of Curriculum globALE, the global framework curriculum for the training of adult educators together with the German Institute for Adult Education (DIE).