The Global Education programme of the North-South Centre of the Council of Europe is embarking on a promising agenda for 2018, building on the successful outcomes of the activities developed in previous years in the field of advocacy, capacity-building and networking.

This year the North-South Centre will be reinforcing its work for the promotion of global education through the initiation of the revision process of the Global Education Guidelines, and through the reinforcement of the media literacy dimension, and the communication and visibility components of its work in the field of global education. These two new activities aim at upgrading the value and relevance of its pedagogical tools, in response to a regular consultation process engaged between the North-South Centre and its beneficiaries, comprising formal and non-formal educators as well as other stakeholders.

More concretely, the North-South Centre will pursue its advocacy work through the follow-up meetings to the regional seminars held in the Balkan, Baltic, South-East Europe and Mediterranean, and in Visegrad countries from 2016 to 2017, bringing together practitioners and policy-makers to assess the state of global development education. In order to reinforce its advocacy work, the North-South Centre will connect its field work among respective Council of Europe diplomatic representations in Strasbourg, the Parliamentary Assembly, the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, and the conference of INGOs. It will also follow on the decisions of the Council of Europe Education Steering Committee.

In the area of capacity-building, while embarking on the revision of the Global Education Guidelines, the North-South Centre is contributing to the professional development of stakeholders through its scheme of eLearning courses and of training of trainers, promoting human rights, intercultural dialogue and active citizenship through a peer approach and an intercultural learning experience. (please read the article on the eLearning courses)

As to the networking dimension, the North-South Centre will privilege a more regular interaction with the Global Education Week network in the preparation and follow-up of the Global Education Week, the annual awareness-raising event coordinated with the national coordinators of the network in Council of Europe member States and Morocco.

It is with renewed enthusiasm that the global education programme team embarks on these projects which reflect the close collaboration between the Council of Europe and the European Union through the Joint agreement signed between the two European institutions for the promotion of global education (iLegend - Intercultural Learning Exchange through Global Education, Networking and Dialogue). In the light of this continued and renewed collaboration, initiated in 2009, the North-South Centre is willing to discuss with the EU the follow-up of the Ilegend project beyond July 2019.