T&T Author To Chair UNESCO Education Commission

Trinidad author to chair UNESCO Education Commission
Dr Kris Rampersad, Trinidad and Tobago representative on UNESCO Executive Board, 2013 to 2017 PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad -- The particular challenges of small island developing states (SIDS), and the particular realities of Trinidad and Tobago as a small island with a continental physical and natural heritage, require special focus within UNESCO programmes and budgets, according to recommendations presented by Dr Kris Rampersad, Trinidad and Tobago representative to the UNESCO executive board during its 196th session in Paris, France. Rampersad was unanimously presented by colleagues of the Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC) and accepted by the executive board to chair the Education Commission at the upcoming 38th sessions of the UNESCO general assembly to take place in November. The decision took place at the 196th session of the UNESCO executive board, on which Rampersad serves as the representative of Trinidad and Tobago. She has been unanimously elected to co-chair the executive board’s Programme and External Relations Commission for the three consecutive sessions since 2013. The general assembly and the executive board are the two governing organs of UNESCO. “These provide considerable opportunities to advance Trinidad and Tobago’s presence in UNESCO which is working to build a culture of peace and share our experiences and challenges in the region in this respect in the face of numerous challenges, including size and capacity as small island sovereign states,” she said. Education Minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh has commended Rampersad’s work on the UNESCO board and her upcoming chairmanship of Trinidad and Tobago, recognising the significant place Trinidad and Tobago has occupied within UNESCO, now celebrating its 70th anniversary. The Trinidad and Tobago representative maintained a high level of participation and representation in the numerous activities of the executive board strengthening networks with representatives of SIDS, the Commonwealth, GRULAC, and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) within UNESCO. She presented the Trinidad and Tobago national Leading for Literacy Now! project as a model approach to address challenges with literacy; and identified challenges identified in the allied National Commission Leading for Numeracy initiatives. Leading for Literacy Now was a programme introduced during her term as chair of the National Commission (2011-2015) in conjunction with declaration of a Decade for Literacy for Trinidad and Tobago implemented by the Elizabeth Crouch-headed Education Committee of the National Commission. It was inspired by UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova’s 10,000 Principal Leadership programme, with financial support from UNESCO, the ministry of education, the private sector and also represents a model UNESCO-public-private sector partnership initiative. Rampersad has actively contributed to UNESCO’s efforts over the past two years in defining actions for programmes and budgets that will meet the needs of small island states; and suggested ways of deepening synergies across UNESCO programme areas of science, education, cultural heritage conservation and advancing the creative industries, and use of information and communications to achieve greater efficiency, effectiveness and cost savings. She advocated the need to ensure balanced and equitable programme focus and allocations through the debates on UNESCO’s role in the UN post-2015 education agenda; UNESCO’s alignment with the Global Geo Parks initiative, protection of journalists, the centralisation of culture in development, and a deeper role of UNESCO Institute of Statistics in matters related to SIDS. She further participated in UNESCO’s introduction of a new International Day of University Sports, the rights to learning without fear and making classrooms safe zones, facilitation of technical and vocational education and education in the digital age; the place of information and communication technologies to advance learning of persons with disabilities; developing global citizenship, among others. Rampersad is an author and an independent media, cultural and literary development educator and consultant. She was appointed to the UNESCO executive board in 2013, following UNESCO elections in which Trinidad and Tobago polled the highest number of votes within the Group of Latin American and Caribbean Countries (GRULAC). http://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/headline-Trinidad-author-to-chair-UNESCO-Education-Commission-27489.html http://newsday.co.tt/news/0,216691.html UNESCO rep calls for help for Small Island States Monday, September 7 2015 The particular challenges of Small Island Developing States (SIDS), and the particular realities of Trinidad and Tobago as a small island with a continental physical and natural heritage, require special focus within UNESCO programmes and budgets. This was among the recommendations presented by Dr Kris Rampersad, Trinidad and Tobago (TT) Representative to the UNESCO Executive Board during its 196th session in Paris, France. Rampersad was presented by colleagues of the Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC) and accepted by the Executive Board to chair the Education Commission at the upcoming 38th sessions of the UNESCO General Assembly to take place in November. The decision took place at the 196th session of the UNESCO Executive Board, in which Rampersad serves as the TT Representative. She has been elected to co-chair the Executive Board’s Programme and External Relations Commission for the three consecutive sessions since 2013 – 194th, 195th, and 196th. The General Assembly and the Executive Board are the two governing organs of UNESCO. “These provide considerable opportunities to advance Trinidad and Tobago’s presence in UNESCO which is working to build a culture of peace and share our experiences and challenges in the region in this respect in the face of numerous challenges, including size and capacity as small island sovereign states,” she said. Education Minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh has commended D Rampersad’s work on the UNESCO Board and her upcoming chairmanship of TT, recognising the significant place TT has occupied within UNESCO, now celebrating its 70th anniversary. The TT representative maintained a high level of participation and representation in the numerous activities of the Executive Board strengthening networks with representatives of SIDS, the Commonwealth, GRULAC, and CARICOM within UNESCO. She presented the TT national Leading for Literacy Now! Project as a model approach to address challenges with literacy; and identified challenges identified in the allied National Commission Leading for Numeracy initiatives. Leading for Literacy Now was a programme introduced during her term as Chair of the National Commission (2011-2015) in conjunction with declaration of a Decade for Literacy for Trinidad and Tobago implemented by the Elizabeth Crouch-headed Education Committee of the National Commission. It was inspired by UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova’s 10,000 Principal Leadership programme, with financial support from UNESCO, the Ministry of Education, the private sector and also represents a model UNESCO-public- private sector partnership initiative. Rampersad has actively contributed to UNESCO’s efforts over the past two years in defining actions for programmes and budgets that will meet the needs of Small Island States; and suggested ways of deepening synergies across UNESCO programme areas of science, education, cultural heritage conservation and advancing the creative industries, and use of information and communications to achieve greater efficiency, effectiveness and cost savings. She advocated the need to ensure balanced and equitable programme focus and allocations through the debates on UNESCO’s role in the UN post- 2015 education agenda; UNESCO’s alignment with the Global Geo Parks initiative, protection of journalists, the centralisation of culture in development, and a deeper role of UNESCO Institute of Statistics in matters related to SIDS. She further participated in UNESCO’s introduction of a new International Day of University Sports, the rights to learning without fear and making classrooms safe zones, facilitation of technical and vocational education and education in the digital age; the place of information and communication technologies to advance learning of persons with disabilities; developing global citizenship, among others. Rampersad is an author and an independent media, cultural and literary development educator and consultant. She was appointed to the UNESCO Executive Board in 2013, following UNESCO elections in which TT polled the highest number of votes within the Group of Latin American and Caribbean Countries.  Trinidad author to chair UNESCO Education Commission Saturday Read more: Caribbean News Now! PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad -- The particular challenges of small island developing states , and the particular realities of Trinidad and Tobago as a small island with a continental physical and natural heritage, require special focus within UNESCO programmes and budgets, according to recommendations presented by Dr Kris Rampersad, Trinidad and Tobago representative to the UNESCO executive board during its 196th session in Paris, France. Rampersad was unanimously presented by colleagues of the Latin American and Caribbean Group and accepted by the executive board to chair the Education Commission at the upcoming 38th sessions of the UNESCO general assembly to take place in November. Start the conversation, or Read more at Caribbean News Now! T&T author chairs Unesco Education Commission http://www.guardian.co.tt/news/2015-09-06/tt-author-chairs-unesco-education-commission Radhica Sookraj Published:  Sunday, September 6, 2015 Dr Kris Rampersad Author and former T&T Guardian Sunday editor Dr Kris Rampersad says special focus should be give to small island states by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco). Rampersad, who represented T&T at the Unesco Executive Board during its 196th session in Paris, said because of the challenges of small states, countries like T&T required special focus within Unesco programmes and budgets. She suggested ways of “deepening synergies in the areas of science, education, cultural heritage conservation and advancing the creative industries, and use of information and communications to achieve greater efficiency, effectiveness and cost savings.” Rampersad also said there was a need to ensure balanced and equitable programme focus and allocations through the debates on Unesco’s role in the UN post-2015 education agenda. She also called for “Unesco’s alignment with the Global Geo Parks initiative, protection of journalists, the centralisation of culture in development, and a deeper role of Unesco Institute of Statistics in matters related to SIDs.”  Rampersad has also advocated the rights to learning without fear, making classrooms safe zones, facilitation of technical and vocational education in the digital age, helping the disabled with ICT and developing global citizenship. Trinidad and Tobago vice-chairs UNESCO's programmes/external relations commission Published on October 25, 2014 Email To Friend    Print Version PARIS, France -- Dr Kris Rampersad, Trinidad and Tobago’s representative to the UNESCO executive board, was elected unopposed as the vice-chair of UNESCO’s programmes and external services commission (PX) to the board for the second consecutive time. The PX Commission is one of two commissions of the UNESCO executive board and is charged with examining and directing UNESCO’s programmes. It is chaired by Porfirio Thierry Muñoz Ledo of Mexico. Dr Kris Rampersad Now chaired by Egypt’s Mohamed Sameh Amr, the 58-member executive board, currently in its 195th session in Paris, is one of three governing organs of UNESCO with the General Assembly and Secretariat. It is responsible for appraising and informing UNESCO’s work programme and budgets. This is the first year of Trinidad and Tobago’s term on the board since it was elected by the 2013 General Assembly, when it polled the highest number of votes among candidates for the Latin American and Caribbean (GRULAC) region. Rampersad, a cultural heritage researcher, educator and multimedia journalist, is a former independent member of the consultative body of UNESCO Inter-Governmental Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage, and chair of the Trinidad and Tobago National Commission for UNESCO. She also serves on the advisory boards of the International Culture University and the International Institute of Gastronomy, Culture, Arts and Tourism, and has worked across the UN, Commonwealth and OAS regions working with multisectoral partners in civil society, government, private sector, academia and intergovernmental agencies to devise multidimensional approaches to addressing challenges of change sustainable development. She has devised and conducted creative interactive courses, seminars and education programmes that encourage critical interrogation of development agendas to stimulate people-centred, gender and culture-sensitive paths to progress. These include evaluations and assessments of north-south relations and particularly the small island developing states of the Caribbean in international policy arena, particularly in relation to gender, governance, culture and education at such forums as Commonwealth and OAS Summits; World Summit of Information Society; World Summit on Arts and Culture, Commonwealth Diversity Conferences, International Conferences on Cultural Policy Research, Brussels Briefings on Agriculture of the ACP-EU, among others. Her successful pilot strategy for such round-table engagements to explore solutions towards food security was adopted as the model for the ACP-EU International Seminar on Media and Agriculture in Brussels. Rampersad is the author of the three acclaimed seminal groundbreaking works: Finding a Place on the Indo-Trinidadian literary history of Trinidad and Tobago; Through the Political Glass Ceiling – Race to Prime Ministership by Trinidad and Tobago’s First Female and LiTTscapes – Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago which features its literary heritage through more than 100 works by more than 60 writers since 1595.  http://174.142.167.193/topstory-Trinidad-and-Tobago-vice-chairs-UNESCO's-programmes_external-relations-commission-23366.html http://www.cnc3.co.tt/aggregator/sources/1

Skewed development vision in CHOGM concept paper

Skewed development vision in CHOGM concept paper

by

20091129

Dr Kris Rampersad

Despite its very clear identification of Commonwealth challenges, and its theme Partnering for a More Equitable and Sustainable Future, the CHOGM concept paper gives unequal focus to its three key words, 'partnering, equitable, and sustainable.' The paper is heavily slanted to climate change, almost to the oblivion of all else, and even that is skewed to the perspective that all the world's ensuing problems will arise from the climate change phenomenon. This constitutes a business-as-usual, plaster-on-the-sore approach that holds the symptoms for the cause.

It ignores the reality that anticipated challenges from changing climate patterns are really manifestations of the continued imposition of culturally alien financial and other systems on many of the world's communities, unbalanced economic development, neglect of the contributions of women and girls, and inequitable investments in the largely rural-based agricultural sectors in favour of close-to-the-nose urban sectors.

The paper's approach is analogous to the get-rich-quick models that spiraled the financial crisis in the first instance; the failures that have arisen from focus on economic security at the expense of food security; and the disrespect for home-grown, culturally evolved modes of coping with life's challenge that have excluded large segments of the world's peoples from an equal share of development – spring-factors that will exacerbate the impacts of climate change, not the other way around!

The concept can certainly benefit from strengthened emphasis on the need for integrated and multi/cross sectoral approaches that promote balance and equity and that recognise different notions and cultures of development that can add enormously to solutions for the current crises of finance, food security, water and land management, soil conservation, rising temperatures and ocean levels.

As it treats with climate change, there is need in the concept for dedicated attention through paragraphs that:

1. recognise that peoples' cultures are central and pivotal to development around which all else orbits if there is to be widespread buy-in-to the Millennium Development Goals;

2. account for the conditions of and contributions of two-thirds of the Commonwealth–who are women and children–as key starting points (not endpoints) to reversing the horrifying imbalances of poverty, malnourishment, child and maternal mortality that will be aided and alleviated through - not token - but revisionist priority positioning of agriculture, food security and rural in the Commonwealth and others' development agendas.

This would go a long way to help right the lopsided vision in the concept, clouded as it is by climate change as the looming tsunami bearing down on the world, by sharpening its focus on the real subjects of the MDGs: the neglected communities that huddle on tsunami-endangered coastlines, farmers who are squeezed onto precarious hillside to produce the world's food as concrete encroach on prime agriculture lands and the plight of the disadvantaged, including women and children.

1. The CHOGM 2009 Concept Paper: http://www.chogm2009.org/pdf/October%20Concept%20Paper%20Final.pdf

2. Dr Kris Rampersad, a T&T based media, cultural and literary development consultant and international relations director of the Network of NGOS of Trinidad and Tobago for the Advancement of Women, reviews the Concept Paper for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in the context of status of the global development agenda.

Visit for more https://krisrampersad.com/

Skewed development vision in CHOGM concept paper | The Trinidad Guardian