Final UNESCO Post.

I realize I am still posting about the things that happened to me over a week ago. My trip to UNESCO in Paris was overwhelming in many ways and because of that I have been posting excessively about it. However, my last week here in Geneva was also a very full week that has ramifications for my future. Yet, I will finish my story about Paris. I need to reflect more about what has happened since then to appropriately write about it.

UNESCO WCHE +10 was officially over. I had planned on leaving Thursday morning. However, because of a UNESCO Joint Programmatic Committee (JPC) on Youth Meeting Thursday afternoon, and an all day meeting of the students I had just bonded with I convinced my boss to let me extend my stay in Paris for another day. I now had a train leaving at 9 am Friday morning.

Thursday morning dawned bright and early. I had gone to bed around 1 am, because I was out with friends enjoying the success of finishing our conference. We met in the room where just a few nights ago we had stayed until nearly 2 am working to make sure the Student voice was represented. We were supposed to start at 8:30 am. I arrived at 8:45 worried that I was horribly late. I was the third person to arrive. After many phone calls and much time wasted on the internet we began our "official" student meeting at 10:30. Only two hours later than planned...

The morning went slowly. We went in circles... we couldn't decide what the most important thing was to do. Finally, we decided to spend lunch drafting plans. Team A was to draft the "action plan" for the future of the global student movement. How do we move forward? What is the purpose and structure of keeping all the students together? Team B was to decide how we react immediately to UNESCO. I pushed for Team B. I thought it was very important that we immediately show how we, as students, felt about the WCHE. I was on Team B with some of my favorite people. (I was originally supposed to be on Team A.. but then because of confusion I ended up with Team B.. .which was better, I think)

We decided that the students needed to draft a letter. We needed to write down and officially tell UNESCO that we were not happy with the way Students were included in the conference. We needed to make sure that this did not happen again. That students when they were included were representative students that had a mandate from other students.. Students who were accountable to someone besides UNESCO.

In the afternoon I went to the JPC. That was also very enlightening. I spent a few hours with people in Paris that work on youth projects, and their organizations have standing with UNESCO. I learned about the International Youth Forum (IYF), I networked with other non-profits in Paris. I learned about how UNESCO works. I hope that WSCF can be present at the International Youth Forum. It should be a good chance for WSCF to really keep it's voice out there. I am very glad I stayed for that meeting.

That evening I returned to the students. We were finished. We had an action plan. (It has yet to be ratified, but I am confident that it will be and that the students will move forward to become more unified). We drafted a letter to UNESCO. Although this is still being edited. Perhaps once it is finalized I will put it here. So that everyone can know what students thought about UNESCO WCHE. We were done. There was nothing left to do.

Being students and being young, we decided to go have some drinks..... I'll leave it at that. I just want to say that I missed my train the next morning.. although I did eventually get back to Geneva.

That was the end of my trip to Paris. I learned so much about international politics and international people and myself during that week. I met some amazing people that are doing amazing things. I hope and pray that I will meet them again someday. I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to be part of this conference. It really makes me thankful of all the opportunities that I have been offered through my internship here at WSCF.

Wednesday July 8th in Paris

Wednesday was the final day of the UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education +10. We were prepared for our battle over the students in the closing plenary. I had gotten almost four hours of sleep. (this was due to over sleeping my initial 8 am appointment).

I arrived a little late to the "Stakeholders" session for NGO's. A friend of mine the General Secretary of the Swiss Student Union got herself on the panel! The MC began the session by asking who wanted to speak on the panel. This was the first time I had seen a student on any panel. She did very well. She represented the student voice and was well spoken. I was so glad when I walked into the session (only 30 minutes late) that she was there.

I had my computer with me and checked my emails. According to an email, some delegates had met with the Man. He said No. Plan B. (Plan B did not involve duct tape and a fire extinguisher, but somehow I wish it had.) We were to find others to pressure him.

Back to my session. Full inclusivity for NGO's in implementing the results of this conference. We want to see learning based in the community. the University can no longer be an ivory tower. Students need to be heard at every level. NGO's also need to be included because they do not have alternative motives, like governments can.

End of the morning session. Planning for our attack. People were still looking for The Man. Trying to pressure him into changing his mind. No luck yet, but hopefully ....

Back to the NGO stakeholder's meeting. We made an "action plan." We divided the group of about 75 people into smaller groups to create action plans for UNESCO and member states on the following topics: Student involvement, Education for all, Funding of education and NGO implementation of UNESCO's plan. I landed in the Education for all committee. Using this very computer we drafted a few sentence description for how to implement Education for all. It was a good process and I think I impressed the people I worked with. Mainly because I had a computer.. :) Sometimes older people (60+) are impressed simply by having a laptop and the knowledge of how to use it quickly. (I like to be able to impress people with something that comes so naturally and easily to me... but that is a topic for another post).

We left that session to have lunch. After a quick sandwich I heard that the Man had been contacted by a different group. This time he had said "yes." (hesitantly, but the yes was still there). All our hard work had paid off! If we got our man on the panel it was definitely worth it to stay up until 4:30 am working with him. I felt so vindicated.

The rest of the afternoon was a blur. I could not tell you what I did until the closing plenary at 5 pm. I sat in the plenary next to my new Norwegian friends and my new American friend. We could see the young faces behind the "official" panel. The group of students did not include our student. Why not? What was going on. We listened as someone from the World Bank spoke in euphemisms about how privatized education would be great. How is he going to get on stage? I listened to The Man present a colleague. What was going on. What should we do now? Should we let these students represent the student voice? How do the 20 of us that are gathered together react to this breach of faith by The Man. He simply broke his word. We decided to do nothing. We sat and watched as the "official" panel finished. It was time for the "voice of the Future". (I have some issues with that because current students are not the future voice of higher education, they are simply the current voice....) The students looked diverse. There was a young Latina, a Chinese woman, an African man, even a woman wearing a head scarf. Okay, so far so good. I began to listen. The African man went first. He was from Benin, I think, and then he started talking about how lucky he was to study in Paris. Okay... an African in Paris, but they really could have gotten an African from Africa. Then the Chines woman. She also was going to school in Paris. Okay.... well.. The the woman from Columbia. She also was going to school in Paris. The American? She was an intern at UNESCO. The woman with the head scarf? She had been chosen by Microsoft. She took the opportunity to thank Bill Gates for allowing her to speak here. What? Microsoft and Bill Gates? I thought we were at a UNESCO meeting, not a meeting sponsored by Microsoft. These students were paraded out in front of the 1,300 Higher Education Ministers of the Member States to prove that UNESCO was listening to the student voice. What did it prove in reality? In reality it proved that UNESCO was talking about how to end the constant drawing of intelligent students from the Global South to the Global North, but in reality was praising this very practice. The future of education is to privatize it all and have all students study in France. That is the message I received. As representative students we were appalled and outraged. What to do? That was all to be decided the next day during our Student Day meeting.

Sorry to all my readers, but you'll have to wait at least one more day to find out what we decided to do.

UNESCO Day 2 Part 3 of 3

Where was I... right.. 1:30 am...

We adjourned from the UNESCO headquarters and found a Kebab place that was still open, where my vegetarian and vegan friends had a very difficult time finding food, but did succeed eventually. Then we retired to the Ibis hotel lobby. This group was an interesting mix. Two Canadians, one Swiss, two from the US (including me) and two from Latin America (Brazil and Uruguay, I believe). We settled into the lobby with our laptops galore and our empty pizza boxes ready to fulfill our mission in less than half an hour. That was the idea when we started - it was only 2 am.

The discussion also took longer because one of the Canadians had to translate everything into Spanish, and then vice verse when the Latin Americans spoke. Our mission had been simple, yet because of underlying tensions we were really discussing other issues. The decision of who was in the meeting had even been political, to a point. The Swiss student had been chosen as a representative of the European Student Union. He was there to tell us what their opinion was. He was there as an emissary, not just on his own. I was there simply by mistake, but also because I like putting in 120% at conferences. I enjoy staying up till all hours of the night planning an attack. In the preceding meeting we had been very upset about this student panel. The plan we came up with was to ambush the man in charge of higher education at UNESCO and tell him that we thought his panel was rubbish and that we should have democratically chosen student representatives on that panel. We also decided that if we only had one student, it should be the student from Brazil. Even though I never understood his Spanish, I always felt the power of his words. Whenever he spoke in our discussions I listened to him, even though I could not understand him. We also agreed upon the four things that he should bring up:
1. Education is a public responsibility and a public good and as such, it should have have high levels of public financing
2. We are against the commodification of education and General Agreement on Trade and Services. (GATS) Opposing this commodification includes opposing a ranking system.
3. Students should participate in all levels of education, and in UNESCO (and other inter-governmental) forums about education
4. Learning should be student centered. Meaning that it takes into account the whole student, not just the academic life, but also the mental, physical and spiritual life of the student. Learning should also include "informal" and "non-formal" education (i.e. integral education) such as internships and traineeships and community based learning.

There was a point about an international ombudsperson, but that could not be agreed upon, so we decided not to bring it up. We finally made this list and had our strategy planned to find the Man tomorrow. It was only 4 am. Only 4 am. We had agreed to meet at 8 am in the lobby so that we could share our brilliant strategy with the rest of the students.

That was the end of Day 2 for me, although, as my Latin American friend reminded us repeatedly, we were already well into Day 3.

UNESCO Day 2 Part 2 of 3

UNESCO Day 2 Part 2



I left off at the end of the official UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education +10. The official program ended around 6pm. I then went to have dinner with Charité, my colleague. We had a very nice dinner and then joined the other students for the meeting to plan our strategy for the final day of WCHE. The night before I had been up until 3 am working with the students and finishing some of my own work, so I was hoping for an earlier night. However, that was not to be.



The night started innocently enough with a discussion of how we had done that day. The agenda was only supposed to go until 11 pm. Not bad. 11 pm. Then we started talking. I shared my stories of not being able to talk in the session. I shared the success of the question I asked being included in responses to the panels. I listened as other students shared their successes and failures of the day. It was already 10 pm.



All that time the drafting committee was drafting in the room next door to us. We knew that while we were plotting they were doing the work that would determine the outcome of this whole conference. We started talking about how we wanted to influence the document. We had won some of the battles from the previous day, we had lost others. The sentence on General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS) had been lost. The US won that battle. The sentence on raking of universities was taken out. We had won that battle. Education was no longer described as a “public good” but was now a “public service.” We were rearing up for another battle. We also needed to know how to make sure that UNESCO continued the work with students. We needed a sentence to include that would make UNESCO responsible to students without making them responsible for students. We finally agreed on a sentence. We sent it via Skype to our student representative. The next day it was in the document. Education also went back to being a “public good” the next day. (We won that battle too!) It was now close to midnight.



The final topic discussed was the student plenary the following day. There was some confusion over how exactly UNESCO had decided who would speak on behalf of students. Although we were happy that students were included in the closing plenary, we were very upset that they were not students sent with a mandate to represent student bodies. These students were either interns with UNESCO or we were not sure what. Therefore they could not be held responsible to anyone except UNESCO. What kind of freedom would they have to say what those sitting in that audience needed to hear from students? The decision was made that we needed to get a student of ours on this panel. After an elongated discussion we agreed that there would be a working group that would spend the later hours of the evening deciding three things. First, what is our method of getting a student on the panel; second, who will that student be; third, what will that student say. I ended up in this working group. It was an accident, but I am glad that I stayed because it gave me a greater insight into the politics of the student group of which I was quickly becoming a key part. It was now 1:30 am. Break – find some food and then off to discuss how we would save the world.

UNESCO Day 2

UNESCO Day 2:

Day one felt like a game. Day too is feeling different. This conference is different everyday. Day one was only plenary sessions. We did not have the chance to really interact with each other in the sessions, and they were talking at us. I, personally, found them rather boring. However, I am not an education expert. Some were interesting, though. Day two is a chance to have “parallel” sessions. There are three themes and then two or three discussions under each theme. For a conference of over 1,200 people you need a lot of options if you want to have a real discussion. Charite and I chose our meetings so that we would not overlap and would represent WSCF at the meeting we thought were the most important. My first meeting was a plenary session on Higher Education and Social Values. Because of timing and location, I missed my second session. However, in the afternoon I went to a meeting on Higher Education and Community Research. My University, Occidental College, is very liberal and ahead of the curve in many respects. We had an office on campus called “Community Based Learning.” This office would help students, both logistically and financially, to get credit for the learning they were doing in the community. I had not realized how unique this idea is. Up that point, that was my favorite session. My next session was a presentation by the Global University Network for Innovation (GUNI). This was the only meeting that my boss had said we HAD to go to. So, of course I went. The topic was Higher Education at a Time of Transformation – Moving towards a New Social Leadership” This session turned out to be the best, in my opinion. The presentations were well done and created food for thought. One of the speakers repeatedly said that we do not need more education in our time, what we need is a different kind of education. I cannot agree more. Just simply allowing everyone to have access to higher education, as it is defined and commodified now, would not be beneficial to society. If instead, we can rethink and reinvent the education process so that it truly teaches people to think critically and to have values than higher education can continue the prominent role it has had as building leaders, societies and cultures.

As good as these meetings were there was something lacking in most of the panelists and in the people that posed questions: students. One of the panels during the parallel sessions had a student on it. One student on one panel out of the twenty four panels. One student. Higher Education’s most important stakeholder is students. Yet students were underrepresented. In my last panel I wanted to ask a question about. I was sitting in the back. I raised my hand. I kept it up. The moderator never called on me. I raised it again. She did not call on me. I raised it again. I held it in the air for a few minutes. I stood up. She still did not call on me. Finally she closed the speaker’s list without ever calling on me. Luckily, one of the speakers she had chosen was an ally with the students. We quickly went to her and explained the question and she allows us to be “part two” of her question. This was the only way that I could get my question into the panel. After this it was the closing remarks. Many of the respondents noted my question and the emphasis on students was put into the notes. That was the end of my afternoon sessions.

Day two ended up being a very long day. I’ll write more about it tomorrow.

UNESCO update

I am the UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education +10. (the +10 is because there was one in 1998, and so we are 10 years later.. I guess they never got the math part of their education).

I have a lot to say, but I don't have time to write it. I will write some tomorrow, hopefully, and then put it up. If not I will work on it after the conference is over. I am working with other student delegations. I will write more later.

Geneva Today, Paris Tomorrow

I am leaving for Paris tomorrow. I will be going to the UNESCO Higher Education Conference. It should be a good experience for me. I have never been to a big UN event like this. My colleague and I are going together. We are going to spend 6 day there. I really like Paris, so I am quite excited about being there, although I am afraid that work will be very tiring. We will be working every day, all day and then I am sure that we will also be working in the evenings to prepare for the next day. I am bringing my computer with me, so hopefully, I will be able to post some updates from UNESCO.

My bosses are both back today, which means that our office is much more lively. Today was my direct supervisor's birthday. We had cake and "children's champagne". It was wonderful.

I also met with a member of Zimbabwe's civil society today. He is here for the CONGO Civil Society Development Forum going on right now. The Zimbabwe Advocacy Office is hosting him. Very interesting to hear him talk about the situation in Zimbabwe and how he is working on HIV/AIDS issues there. I feel very privileged to be a part of that conversation.

Friday and no where to go

I am planning a trip to Cannes. (I spent the academic year 2007-2008 there) I was planning on going July 10, but then due to some reasons I thought that date might not work. So I talked to my friends and we thought (for about 2 days) that we would go this weekend. I got my hopes all up and I got all excited! Now we are back to the original date. I guess I have to wait to two weeks before I can actually go!

In between I am going to do quite a lot. I am going to the UNESCO Conference on Higher Education in Paris. I am sort of excited about it. I am glad to be going to Paris. It's such a wonderful city, but I don't know enough about the conference yet to be too excited. I have started my research. It is a long process. Luckily I have about a week to finish it. I think it will be tiring. I also do not know anyone in Paris, except for my fellow intern that is going with me. I am glad we are going together. I am also working rather hard on Student World. It would be nice if I could get it all finished before I go to Paris. (By all finished, I mean the articles typed up, not done completely). That way we could work on designing it and then get it published ASAP.

I am amazed that in this age of technology we have trouble putting out one a year when for decades from the naughts to the 60's they managed to put out a quarterly journal. We are working hard in the office to fix that. I wonder if the excessive amount of communication actually makes for less information. It's like the 24 hour news cycle. They have to ALWAYS have something on the TV so usually they are not actually saying anything. So you just tune them out. When they do actually say something no one is listening. More communication going on, but less exchanging of information. Perhaps that is just me. I am rather lazy so I tend to ignore things and just read what is right in front of me.