UNESCO - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

02/10/2025 | News release | Distributed by Public on 02/11/2025 05:35

UNESCO brought together local, regional, and national actors from the Amazon to co-design an educational strategy for and by adolescents

The program aims to ensure that adolescents can complete their secondary education while developing a set of comprehensive skills that will help them contribute to their life projects and improve their civic relationship with their environment, all without losing their local and cultural identity.

As part of this process, with the facilitation of the Peruvian Institute of Studies (IEP), an event called the "Co-design Workshop for an Educational Proposal for Amazonian Secondary Education" took place from January 28 to 30 in Lima. The goal was to collaboratively design an educational change roadmap that addresses the issues, vocations, and characteristics of adolescents in the Amazon.

"If the Amazon is the future of the planet, the adolescents and youth who inhabit it are its future. And education is key in the Amazonian agenda to guarantee that future," emphasized Guiomar Alonso Cano, UNESCO Representative in Peru, during the inauguration.

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The event was attended by 56 representatives from 38 local, regional, and national institutions, including social, ecclesiastical, and indigenous organizations from the regions of Loreto, Ucayali, Madre de Dios, and Amazonas; as well as public sector authorities: UGEL, DRE, Ministries of Education, Culture, and Social Development and Inclusion.

During the workshop, IEP and the Council of Awajún Wampis Women Umakai Yawi (COMUAWUY) presented the results of territorial participatory consultations conducted with adolescents, mothers, fathers, apus, leaders, teachers, school administrators, and local authorities in Iquitos, Pucallpa, and Condorcanqui in December 2024.

The contributions gathered in the territorial consultations and the co-design workshop are constituent elements that, along with prior experiences from the Amazon and the Horizontes Rural program, will enable the construction of a solid educational proposal that responds to the voices of the Amazon and its territorial characteristics.

The proposal for a secondary education program for and by the Amazon seeks to address issues such as interculturality, bilingual education, socio-emotional well-being and protection, climate change, and productive development. It will be implemented in two phases from 2025 to 2029.