This past September, the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens hosted the 4th and final preparatory meeting for its annual landmark forum, the Global Engagement and Empowerment Forum (GEEF).
Ban Ki-moon Centre CEO Monika Froehler, accompanied by Board member Andrea Pfanzelter and Program Officer Julia Zimmerman, travelled to New York for the UNGA high-level week to promote the upcoming GEEF (February 26-27, 2020) and to meet with colleagues from IGEE as well as other stakeholders.
Professor Joonhong Park and Professor Taein Park from IGEE joined the Ban Ki-moon Centre team in promoting the Forum at diverse meetings held at the margins of the UNGA.
Among these meetings, the delegation met with the SDSN’s SDG Academy team including Chandrika Bahadur, President of the SDSN Association. The Director of SDSN, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, is also a Board member of the Ban Ki-moon Centre. During the meeting, the group discussed the role of education for the sustainable development and global citizenship and how it can be promoted.
The delegation also attended the International Conference on Sustainable Development (ICSD) hosted at Columbia University, met with Ban Ki-moon Centre Co-chair Ban Ki-moon at a high-level event hosted by the Elders and the International Rescue Committee, had a meeting with Ban Ki-moon Centre Board member Michael Sheldrick at the headquarters of Global Citizen, and met with the Secretary-General of Club de Madrid Maria Elena Agüero.
This year, as with the past two years, the GEEF will be held at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea and will be co-hosted by the IGEE and the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens. The forum will take place on February 26-27 2020 and the guiding-theme is “Planet, Peace and Partnerships.” We hope to see you there!
On the 16th and 17th of February the Experts’ Meeting on Teaching and Learning Responsible Transformative Engagement organized by the Centre, UNESCO, and UNESCO APCEIU took place in Seoul, South Korea. The meeting brought together more than 20 international experts from public, private, academic, and/or NGO sectors to discuss ways to engage youth in influencing the systems that impacts their quality of life.
The group actively discussed the fundamental issues of addressing the youth from varied perspectives as well as peaceful revolutions of youth activists that led to the change of government, the role of social media and digital citizenship, and more other important matters regarding the subject. The ideas and suggestions that were brought up during the meeting will be included in the policy brief which will be published by UNESCO.
Including BKMC CEO Monika Froehler and Board member Michael Sheldrick, Vice President of Global Citizen, the participants consisted of:
Soo-hyang Choi, Director of Division for Inclusion, Peace and Sustainable Development, UNESCO
Taneisha Ingleton, Leadership Development Programme Writer and Designer, Educational Leadership Researcher and Facilitator, Consultant of competency-based leadership development models
Rafiullah Kakar, International Development and Public Policy professional