Marking its
first ever joint cooperation with the Education and Culture Ministry and the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the
Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) is launching a Green School
Action Project to help accelerate the development of environmental education in
schools in Indonesia.
KOICA
Indonesia Office representative, Sungho Choi, said Friday that the Green School
Action Project was a collaborative and supportive scheme for the Indonesian
government delivered by the KOICA and UNESCO Jakarta office on behalf of the
Korean government.
This
program is aimed at helping to build the capacity of Indonesian teachers to
raise awareness on sustainable development in schools.
“Combating
climate change is now the global concern in which joint efforts are essential.
No country or region is free from this global issue. It’s highly appropriate
for us to invest in education for sustainable development as climate change is
not only about changing the environment but it can also lead to poverty,” said
Sungho Choi on the sidelines of a three-day regional workshop for “Green Action
in East Asia: Centered on Teacher Capacity Building for Climate Change
Education”, which began on Friday.
For the
project, he said, the KOICA had contributed US$700,000 for building capacity
among teachers from 20 pilot schools in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, through
education on climate change and sustainable development.
About 160
participants from seven countries, comprising Brunei Darussalam, China,
Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam, are attending the
workshop. Teachers from the 20 pilot schools for the Green School Action
Project in Banjarmasin are also taking part in the event.
“Supporting
environmental management and sustainable development is one of the core sectors
in bilateral cooperation conducted by the KOICA. I sincerely hope that we can
continue to closely work on sustainable cooperation and environmental education
to address the impacts of climate change,” said Sungho Choi.
Under the
Adiwiyata program, which was launched in 2006, the Environment Ministry, in
cooperation with the Education and Culture Ministry, has created green school
communities that are able to manage and protect the environment partly to
support sustainable development programs that the government is currently
working on.
“We know
that the Indonesian government already has a good program on green schools
called Adiwiyata. We hope that the Green School Action Project can add
increased values to that work,” said UNESCO Jakarta’s head of education
division, Anwar al-Said.
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