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UNESCO is localizing Global Citizenship Education integration in Kyrgyzstan to promote social cohesion.

Regional office UNESCO in Almaty is launching new project component of Global Citizenship Education integration to promote transversal skills aimed at empowering both civil society and duty bearers to think critically, fostering civil competences such as intercultural understanding, tolerance and promoting just, peaceful, inclusive approaches at local and national levels to strengthen social cohesion in Kyrgyzstan in partnership with Agency for Quality Assurance in Education-Ednet in Central Asia from May 2024 till April 2025 in Kyrgyzstan.

1 July 2024

GCED elements of the project will be also culturally contextualized and emerge from the concerns, motivations, and experiences of the given project targets and locations in Kyrgyzstan. GCED’s component will be launched as a non- formal and life-long, continuous, transformative efforts based on community-based education strategies, practices, and grassroots community groups (mainly PCC) engagements to strengthen social ties, coherence, and pathway to constructing lasting peace. This will happen by fostering the next activities such as:

Expertise desk-review assessment of international and national and policies, UNESCO recourses to draw a conceptual framework for fostering inclusion, social cohesion, building resilience and a culture of peace for GCED’s localization.

Conducting local awareness-raising workshop «We need to tolerate» (assessment -learning – adaptation model) to promote knowledge, civic skills, competencies and behaviors for democratic cultures, and peace in partnership with Ministry of Сulture, Information, Sports, and Youth Policy of the Kyrgyz Republic.

Developing Toolkit and Policy Brief on the integration of GCED at the community level in close collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, information, Sports, and Youth Policy of the Kyrgyz Republic. This guidance will consist good practices, tools and including five pillars for the holistic, foundational elements of a transformative approach: Pillar 1: Learning to Know, Pillar 2: Learning to Do (like community-building exercises such as group-talk), Pillar 3: Learning to Live Together, Pillar 4: Learning to Be, Pillar 5:Learning to Become with the World for following civic competencies such as: 1.Empathy 2. Critical thinking/problem solving 3. Ability to communicate and collaborate with others 4. Conflict resolution 5. Sense and security of identity 6. Shared universal values (human rights, peace, justice, etc.) 7. Respect for diversity/intercultural understanding.

Adapting Toolkit and Policy Brief through national stakeholder consultation, by applying participatory approaches and localizing toolkit by piloting. National validation forum «Role of Education in Peace and Resilience Building» with national multistakeholder consultations to validate the policy brief and discuss with stakeholder’s engagement for further possible implementation under related government programs and concepts by multistakeholder approach-consultations at the national level.

The “Strengthening national capacities and civil society for social cohesion” project is implementing by UNESCO Almaty Regional Office in close collaboration with UNDP in Kyrgyzstan and funded by the UN (United Nations) Peacebuilding Fund.