David Selby at the Collective Working Meeting of the Partnership for Education and Research about Responsible Living (PERL) , Marseilles, France, 8 March 2013
David Selby will speak to some 70-80 PERL coordinators and partners from Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America assembled for a working group meeting at Hotel Mercur, Marseilles on 8 March 2013. Also in attendance will be representatives of UNESCO, UNEP and Consumers International. David will speak about the necessary evolution from education for sustainable development to education for sustainable moderation given the challenges faced globally. The title of his talk will be: Education for the Future We Want: Working from Authentic, Grounded Hopefulness. Later in the day David will facilitate a workshop for those wishing to discuss his input in more depth and to learn more of practical implications.
PERL is a network of educators and researchers from over 100 institutions of higher education in 50 countries undertaking research and developing learning methods and approaches to encourage people to contribute to positive change through life choices. For details, visit: http://www.perlprojects.org/
The PERL 7-9 March Collective Working Meeting has been titled: The Future We Want. The circular for the event describes its purpose as follows:
There is no doubt about the need for changes in the world. Tomorrow will not look like today and many efforts have been made to describe how the future should be. The Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development in June (2012) was, in many ways, an attempt to consolidate many diverse approaches into the one common description of ‘The Future We Want’. Although much was achieved, many felt the outcome of the conference did not, in fact, define the future as they conceive it. A new round of global consultations has begun, focussing on the Sustainable Development Goals which will replace the Millennium Development Goals in 2015. In this context, the search is on for goals which will lead us not to the world which, by default, results from our lack of choosing and doing but a world as we actually want it to be. PERL has tried to examine what is necessary in order to achieve a global community where responsible, sustainable living is not only the goal but also the norm. The meeting planned in Marseilles gives us a valuable opportunity to further investigate the processes that might lead us to a future we truly want and to integrate our understanding into the concrete research and educational activities which PERL plans to undertake during the coming three years.