Sharing experience and information was the South East Asia Centre of Lifelong Learning for Sustainable Development (SEACLLSD, Philippines) invited to the workshop by the Regional Centre for Adult Education (ASFEC) in Sirs El-Layyan, Egypt, together with UNESCO Beirut and UNESCO Cairo,

SEA CLLSD shared programmes and experiences that could be adapted within the Arab Region and provided an overview of Alternative Learning Systems (ALS) and Lifelong Learning in the Philippines. A lecture at the Adult Education Authority (AIA) in Cairo on Lifelong Learning and UNESCO’s post-2015 agenda was conducted by Lucio Sia, Executive Director of SEACLLSD. Ms Nermeen Rashad, who represented ASFEC during the meeting in Manila last May, provided interpretation (English-Arabic) to the group of 40 adult education specialists.

Participants also visited ASFEC’s premises, its museum and library as part of the 5-day workshop spearheaded by UNESCO Beirut (Dr. Hamed Alhamami, Director, and Dr Hegazi Idris, Programme Specialist) in collaboration with UNESCO Cairo (Dr Ghaith Faris, Director, Dr Chérine Khallaf, National Programme Officer in Education and Mr. Igor Kitaev, Programme Specialist) and ASFEC (Dr. Mohamad Refaat, Director and Dr Reda Hegazy, Deputy Director). 

The meeting is in line with the decisions of the 4th meeting of UNESCO Category II Centres in Education to reinforce networks, learn from each other and find avenues of collaboration and partnership towards programme excellence.