East African Community of Practice for SDG 4.7 is a project being implemented by East African National Commissions for UNESCO in partnership with German National Commission for UNESCO and is aimed at providing a flexible model for collaborative networking for the purpose of mutual learning, mainstreaming and harmonization of approaches for SDG 4.7 in the region. The East African Community of Practice for SDG 4.7 brings together UNESCO National Commissions (NATCOMs) and their school networks (in particular ASPnet) in six East African countries (Burundi, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda) with one respective national lead NGO each, generally the NGO in charge of running the Eco-Schools at the national level in five of these countries The Community of Practice is expected to enable East African partners to benefit from increased cooperation, knowledge exchange, and sharing of expertise and resources, develop a concerted approach on shared contexts, agendas, and challenges (including Covid-19 recovery), and provide new data for monitoring of SDG 4.7 progress in the region. The approaches to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) such as ASPnet schools, Eco-Schools and ELIMU for the Goals which have been tested, spearheaded and refined by NATCOMs and partner NGOs shall inform development of the East African Community of Practice as a model for regional collaboration; and possibly inspire other regions.
Objectives of the project
- To identify shared national challenges and take collective action on priority themes to support achievement of SDG 4.7 in East Africa.
- To enable sharing of good practices, harmonization of approaches and standards, and deepening the ESD knowledge and expertise to fully support the East African context and achievement of the SDGs and UNESCO’s framework ESD for 2030.
- To foster increased government partnership, and further integrate holistic rights-based approaches into national education policies in line with UNESCO’s ESD framework 2030
- Based on regional consensus, to develop and pursue projects such as the development of criteria, twinning, micro projects and context specific education tools and resources for schools to support priority themes according to the SDGs and UNESCO’s ESD framework 2030.
- To collaboratively create appropriate monitoring and evaluation tools to measure implementation of SDG 4.7 in East African countries
- To raise the profile of ESD and SDG 4.7 in East Africa amongst strategic partners and funding bodies, and source short-term and long-term sponsorship for relevant programmes in the African region.
Implementation of The Project:
The project is being implemented in a phased manner; a pilot phase targeting two countries i.e. Uganda and Kenya from August to December 2022 and a one-year scale-up phase (January –December 2023) for the four remaining countries i.e. Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi and Malawi. The pilot phase is expected to generate lessons and good practices for scale up of similar programme activities in the second phase of implementation for other countries in 2023; with active participation of pilot phase countries through knowledge and experience sharing. NATCOMs from the 4 scale up countries shall participate in 2 pilot phase activities namely; in the initial programme introductory meeting and in the final evaluation meeting for their orientation and input to inform the scale programme
The project pilot phase UNATCOM and KNATCOM are working with 2 partner NGO’s from each country, namely AROCHA Uganda from Uganda and Kenya Organisation for Environmental Education (KOEE) from Kenya. The beneficiary Schools that have been selected from both countries respectively are Kitezi primary school in Uganda and Muthurwa Primary school in Kenya.
For the first Phase outcome of the Intervention, refer to the Project Inception Report below;