My Speech at the UNESCO Pre-Summit of the Transforming Education Summit at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris

I spoke on the 30th June, 2022 at the one of the UNESCO Pre-Summit of Transforming Education Action Tracks alongside other world leaders and I shared from the youth perspective and share my work in the education space.

Please find and read my talking points below;

First and foremost, we need to define what education means and how it can serve as a tool to transform an individual, especially children living in underserved communities, prepare them for the future of work, and enable them to change their circumstances and solve their problems.

Education is a lifelong process that equips an individual with the skills, knowledge, attitudes, and values to solve societal problems. This is what the school should do and prepare learners for. Education is needed as a piece to complete the jigsaw puzzle of a child. For example, what happens when a child does not have access to core foundational literacy and numeracy skills, they are not able to learn higher-order cognitive skills that are needed in the ever-changing workforce today.

While literacy and numeracy skills won't be my core focus, I would like to talk about the learning deficiency affecting students in rural and underserved communities. The lack of the environment, space, opportunities, and resources to develop core life and 21st-century skills could affect the opportunity that they get in the future in the ever-changing world.

One of the ways I have been working towards this is through organizing a Bootcamp Skill2Rural, where children in underserved identify problems within their community, work in groups and co-create solutions to them. Such boot camp requires a lower literacy level. Children naturally are curious and creative so we need to create a space for them to harness and explore their creativity and encourage collaboration, and adaptive, critical, and reflective thinking. These are the skills that are needed now and in the future. I have seen children in rural communities create mechanized farms, mobile clinics, and community tech labs, and commit to new careers that would be geared toward solving societal problems. This is what transforming education means.

Lastly, we should all know that to transform education, we cannot do it without the readiness and commitment of the learners themselves. So, we need to constantly engage them beyond one-off intervention and remove barriers that may disable access to complete the puzzle i.e. this could be ensuring they have access to scholarships to complete basic and higher education. Access to proper meals, provide food vouchers, engage their parents, and provide adequate mentoring and educational advice. Skills sometimes are not enough, we need to think about other enablers to transform education.

#TransformingEducation

Watch the video of my speech here