The three prominent institutions signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to highlight the urgent need for Social Emotional Learning (SEL) to be mainstreamed into education systems to transform education and shape a future geared toward providing peace and human flourishing, in simpler words-‘Rethinking Learning’.

Anantha Duraiappah, Director at the UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Sustainable Development and Peace, also highlighted two courses developed by UNESCO MGIEP, namely SEEK and Youth Waging Peace. Around 30,000 youths have been trained through these courses across the subcontinent, and this partnership aims to boost the footprints.

The courses aim to equip young people with SEL competencies to help them navigate their emotions while dealing with challenging situations such as appearing for examinations, job interviews, conflicts in relationships and adjusting to varied academic and professional atmospheres.

The partnership plans to provide unique vocational skills combined with SEL courses jointly certified by the Government Universities and UNESCO MGIEP, a valuable output for youth employability. The expected outcomes of this partnership also include adapting UNESCO MGIEP’s courses with relevant local contextualisation and translation where possible and building capacities of teachers and students by enrolling them in UNESCO MGIEP’s SEL for Teachers and SEL for Youth courses. Finally, the partnership will provide a platform to contribute to UNESCO MGIEP’s research programmes in running research pilot for SEL assessment for impact studies.