The initiative ‘Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship: the central role of partnerships between central institutions, Universities and Local Authorities’ represents one of the two Lines of Action set out in the AICS-MASE Agreement, which aims to promote awareness-raising programmes for sustainable development and global citizenship, with a purpose to providing students at Italian universities with useful tools to develop cross-cutting and citizenship skills, whilst also encouraging the adoption of experimental models of collaboration between central institutions, local authorities and universities.
The initiative is carried out by the University of Bari, Department of Humanities Research and Innovation, and involves a broad range of Italian universities that are members of the Italian University Network for Sustainable Development (RUS).
Through innovative teaching and learning methodologies applied to a broad and representative sample of universities participating in the Network of Universities for Sustainable Development, and through the establishment of partnerships and joint initiatives between national and regional bodies and institutions, the project aims to:
- promote transformative educational programmes for sustainable development and global citizenship in universities, based on the integration of specialist knowledge with a view to solve complex problems, in full implementation of the principles of the 2030 Agenda, including through international dialogue;
- to promote collaboration between universities and local communities on educational issues and, through this, to contribute to the implementation of the Strategies and Agendas for sustainable development and global citizenship;
- to contribute to the development of metrics and evaluation tools for educational policies on sustainable development and global citizenship, including through dialogue with local communities and non-state actors, while fostering links with existing initiatives at European and international level;
- to consolidate Italy’s role at international level as a leading country in the territorialisation of the 2030 Agenda, with particular reference to the link between the transformative potential of local communities and education.