Director General of UNESCO, Ms. Irina Bukova, Minister of Education at M.A. 1,
Vice President of the University of the Free and Hands-off City of Hamburg,
Ursula Mielke, Honorable Speakers, Members of UIL's Governing Board,
Representatives of Ministries, Research Institutions and Organizations.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's an immense pleasure today to celebrate the 60th anniversary
of UNESCO's Institute for Lifelong Learning.
This day is a day of joy.
I remember when, in 1997, we celebrated the Conference Year 5 in Hamburg.
The motto was, Learning is a Joy.
Learning is still a joy if we look at it in the lifelong learning perspective of 2012.
Learning in the perspective of lifelong learning is also a big effort.
It's today become mainstream education policy.
When I go to countries around the world, more and more often I'm informed
that now also this country has made a law, a legal framework for lifelong learning.
They have started to appoint learning cities as drivers for advocacy for the learning society.
They have started to organize adult education and learning in new ways
that try to adapt to the changing conditions in the world
to new trends and developments in the global world.
It is very easy to try to respond to the challenges by pointing to the problem areas
trying to adapt to new problem situations.
But I'd like also to point to another way of meeting challenges
that is to look at the new opportunities.
The changing world of today is changing in many respects.
We discuss it in the form of demographic shifts,
new challenges in relation to climate change,
the widening gap in inequalities among different regions in the world,
different segments in societies, the financial crisis as one of it.
There are many challenges.
But I'd like to say that when we look at lifelong learning
and try to look at it in its potential for responding to global challenges,
we also should look to the new opportunities there is.
And I think that the situation is ripe for UNESCO to take global leadership
in the field of education in a number of areas.
New grip is possible today.
There are new types of youth groups in many countries
who are getting new political consciousness and awareness,
trying to take responsibility for developments in civil society.
Also a lot of new economical developments
that cannot be analyzed the way we used to do it.
The whole area for social economic development, I think,
is changing and has changed.
The balance of world powers, as you know,
is also changing. We see new role models.
We see new cases.
We can showcase new examples of good practice
also in the field of lifelong learning.
Next generation lifelong learning is maybe the next generation education.
I've been talking this morning about education for all
and I could maybe have a vision that the next phase would be lifelong learning for all.
Lifelong learning in the perspective of sustainability, of sustainable development,
we can no longer look away from relating education policies to sustainable development.
And this, I think, is a universal interest for all regions in the world.
UIL has just made a new strategy for the next two years
of its midterm strategy ending by the end of next year.
It's called repositioning the institute.
We build on 60 years of work, experience and practice.
The institute is very small.
It has only 32 staff, though from 17 different countries.
But it has a global reputation.
There's hardly any adult educator in the world who has not heard about UIL.
UIL is trying to meet the changing challenges,
the changing set of opportunities in the world
that could be met through lifelong learning.
As we would like to hear from many stakeholders,
from serious experts working outside of our reach normally within UIL,
we have invited a number of speakers today, presenters,
to come up with a vision for how the new global challenges could be met through lifelong learning.
And with this, I'm going to give the floor to Jameril Bilgetterian,
who will be the moderator for the session with presentations of our five speakers.