The meeting was opened by the Minister of Education and the Minister of Higher Education, H.E. Dr. Bader Hamad AL-Issa, the Director of UNESCO Doha Office, Dr. Anna Paolini, the Chairman of Al-Saad Foundation for Knowledge and Scientific Research, Sheikha Fadyah Al Sabah and the Secretary General of Kuwait National Commission to UNESCO.

The meeting is aimed at enhancing school curriculum as well as the learning experience of the students towards environmental sustainability.

The meeting was attended by more than 40 participants including Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) coordinators from the Ministries of Education from the participating countries, academics, resource persons as well as representatives from NGOs, the private sector and youth organisations implementing ESD programmes.

The consultation will include working groups during which each delegation will be asked to draft national implementation strategies to launch the Green School Initiative at the national level.

The Green Schools Initiative/Programme aims to provide a curriculum that educates people towards making informed decisions and to take decisive individual and collective action on environment related matters.

The Green Schools Curriculum is targeted towards encouraging ownership of such global and local issues and the empowerment to affect change. It therefore recommends a curriculum specifically designed to change learners’ behavior through the use of action based pedagogy that allows learners to developinvestigative, evaluative, and action oriented thinking and to use these skills to assess their own impact on the environment.