From News Desk

The nine UNESCO Learning Cities of Colombia came together in a meeting hosted by the Mayor’s Office of Medellín to officially launch the Colombian Learning Cities Network. These cities include – Bogotá, Chía, Envigado, La Estrella, Manizales, Medellín, Quibdó, Rionegro and Tunja.

Federico Gutiérrez Zuluaga, Mayor of the UNESCO Learning City of Medellín, has been appointed President of the Network. He emphasised the city’s strong commitment to education, “For us, education has the most important budget line — over 10 trillion pesos in four years — not only in infrastructure, but also in educational quality, relevance, expansion and coverage. This includes higher education as well as learning processes and job training at all ages. But we must continue improving. There are many challenges, and that is the advantage of being in this network: we share good experiences, we teach others, but we also learn.”

Raúl Valdés Cotera, Coordinator of the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities at the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, highlighted the strategic value of national cooperation, “National networks of Learning Cities are an important driver of exchange and action. Building on the expertise, tools and partnerships provided by the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities at the international level, they can contextualize knowledge and training to national realities, join forces for shared initiatives and help ensure that lifelong learning becomes a national development priority.”

This new national network aims to coordinate efforts to build smart, inclusive and sustainable cities, where creativity, science, innovation and knowledge transfer serve as pillars of development – with learning at the heart of social transformation. It seeks to foster cross‑sector dialogue, strengthen local capacities, and contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

Perspective

This programme of the UNESCO can be a constructive effort to expand education and learning in communities where traditionally people have not had access to it. At the same time, following aspects need to be kept in mind – education should place stress on innovative and critical thinking and it should harmonise traditional cultural knowledge with the modern advancements. Learners should be inculcated with democratic and sustainable values as part of their learning process. Further, effort should be also made to impart certain skills to them so that they can earn their living when they complete their education and not depend upon the society to give them a job on the basis of their education. It’s time education is not projected as a passport to the job market, as there simply cannot be billions of jobs where everyone can be accommodated. It has been observed that the large number of unemployed youth who can’t find a job after completing education get disillusioned by the very idea of education.

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