Reden

Dear Excellencies,
dear Colleagues,
dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is my great pleasure to welcome you today.
The last two days we enjoyed plenty of inspiring
speeches and motivating discussions. In the
following session we invite you to meet German
Good Practices and offer you a glimpse of how
ESD is implemented on the ground.
When we started planning this World
Conference, we were excited to welcome you all
in Berlin. To have a dynamic part in the Program
we planned field trips to local ESD practitioners:
We wanted to give you a chance to get to know
and experience the local ESD community
yourself. That is why we called upon our local
ESD stakeholders to open their doors and share
their work and experiences with you.
Unfortunately, the pandemic does not allow us to
physically travel yet. But: Coming together
digitally allows us to offer you an even wider
variety of actors across Germany in this session.
I am pleased to invite you to go on a virtual
journey and meet one of the 15 hosts from
different fields:

- You will find ESD in action in formal as well
as in informal educational settings: at
schools and universities as well as
museums and early childhood educators.
- Some of the hosts are part of the UNESCO
family. You will find inspiring examples of
UNESCO networks presenting how they
implement ESD in their day-to-day work.
- You will find insights on how ESD can be a
motor for gender equality and empower
young people to change the world – and
much more!
What connects all of these projects and
stakeholders is the great passion and energy for
putting ESD into practise. We hope that you can
use this opportunity to exchange on the topics
that are most relevant to you directly with the
stakeholders right now. We are convinced that
you can use this opportunity to learn from each
other and be inspired. Together we can
strengthen our messages around ESD.
I want to use this opportunity to thank the
UNESCO and the Federal Ministry of Education
and Research for a trusting partnership. We are
grateful to support this World Conference as an
important milestone for ESD for 2030.

At the German Commission for UNESCO we
remain committed to promote ESD and spread
ESD through our strong network – part of which
you will get to know right now. We will continue
to strengthen the existing partnerships and
explore new synergies. We strongly believe that
ESD is the key for a more sustainable and just
world. Our mandate is clear: We need to further
reinforce our collective efforts to put ESD for
2030 in practice.
I wish you all very fruitful discussions and hope
you will be able to come to Germany very soon
to share your experience with us in person.
Thank you very much.