Our collective dream was of a festival co-constructed to celebrate International Education Day, a festival that would bring together young people, educators, practitioners and institutions from all over the world. We imagined communities united under a single banner, facilitating encounters, sharing solutions and sending a message of hope to the younger generations threatened by the current crises. Finally, we wanted this message to engage all organizations and individuals in the collective resolution of complex problems, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, by offering them concrete avenues for action.
Thanks to you, the dream became reality, and with incredible energy. From January 24 to 30, 250 sessions tackled a multitude of crucial issues, such as children's rights and health, education for sustainable development, learning ecosystems, new models of leadership and the financing of education. Moments of discovery of new initiatives, numerous workshops and rich exchanges between players from the worlds of art, science, education, social entrepreneurship and so on.
As a result, 330 speakers and 2,500 participants from 90 countries interacted on the Festival platform, while thousands more followed the sessions (5,500 on the #LP YouTube channel). Many also took part in events organized in the Hub by various partner organizations, such as the UNESCO conference, Global Minnesota's International Education Day National Symposium, Lyon's Festival de l'Apprendre (each of which mobilized several thousand participants), or the many activities orchestrated by, with and for young people, such as the Youth x Youth sessions.
On the strength of this collective success and support, we are already planning the next steps:
- You will soon receive a questionnaire inviting you to share your experience of the Festival and submit your ideas. We'd like to thank you in advance for your responses, which will help us prepare the 2022 edition with you, and meet your expectations even better.
- We will draw on the wealth of resources gathered during the Festival to nurture editorial content at the service of the community, pursuing fruitful exchanges and in-depth research on hot topics.
- Beyond the Festival, we'll also be offering partner organizations various ways of getting involved in the #LearningPlanet initiative, whether to promote and share more of your existing programs, to participate in events throughout the year, to facilitate the sharing of expertise within the community, to build ambitious projects together, or to invite you to propose new areas of collaboration that you'd like to implement. These topics will be covered in the 2nd #LearningPlanet newsletter in February. Stay tuned!
