How to evaluate an EFSD program?

After understanding and learning the process of engaging people in sustainability and also understanding sustainable development itself, we as future practitioners, should be able to design an educational program but also to evaluate its benefits for the social environmental and economical context. The process of bringing about the change for sustainability is a cyclical and continuous process of learning, so the educational programs have to be evaluated and improved on the same context on continuity.
But why should we evaluate educational programs? The department of environment and conservation (NSW) has developed a special guideline on how practitioners could evaluate their own programs and others and also describes the importance of an evaluation process to foster improvements and learning outcomes, it states:

"When you evaluate a program, you can

learn from your experiences and adjust

your program for the future, where needed."

Evaluation also builds clarifications and transparency between practitioners and stakeholders creating trust and ownership from everyone involved in the process.  

The effectiveness of a program depends on three important factors:

1. Impacts
2. Outcomes
3. Outputs

Impact

An impact is an actual or intended change in human development as measured by people’s well-being. An

impact generally captures change in people’s lives. 

Outcome

An outcome is an actual or intended change in development conditions that interventions are seeking to

support. It usually relates to changes in an institution’s ability to work better and fulfil its mandate.

Output

An output is a short-term development result produced by project and non-project activities. It relates to the

completion (rather than the conduct) of activities and is a product and/or service that make achievement of

outcomes possible. 

It also depends if the program has embedded minimum criterias of the Education for Sustainable development steps:

1. Creating a common vision - Envisioning process
2. Critical thinking and reflection
3. Participation in decision making
4. Formation of new partnerships
5. Systemic thinking

And I would also like to add to those factors a really important criteria which will guarantee the long term success of the program: Capacity Building, "the measurement of capacity and specifically the capture of change in capacity are critical to understanding the success of the capacity development process" (UNDP 2008), therefore measuring and analysing the capacity building created by a specific program is essential to evaluate its efficiency and success.
A personal framework will be presented in order to demonstrate our understanding and key ideas about EFSD and also will allow us to create our own vision of a successful educational program.

Now what? Conclusion

Watch Malnutrition, a silent epidemic on PBS. See more from Need To Know.

After all and after watching this video about malnutrition in countries such as Africa, India, Bangladesh and Mexico I came to a conclusion that Environmental awareness and sustainability is something that has to start from within.  We have seen along the years NGOs trying to "instigate" guiltiness around the world in order to make other people who don't suffer from malnutrition (example) to feel responsible for those who does. In my opinion, that method only look at the end result of a problem, in this case poverty. It does not educate individuals in order to empower than to make better decisions in the first place to contribute in a more positive and conscious way to such problems. I always feel overwhelmed when I see videos or documentaries such "A silent epidemic", but is something (unfortunately) that after a while disappears and that is because it might be something really impressive but it is not something that we see in our everyday life. 

Fortunately for me and for a bunch of bright people at Uni, we are having the opportunity to understand the real causes of such a problem and a whole other problems involving the environment, our society and economy. But we have not just been exposed to the results, we have had the chance to see what causes those issues, who are responsible for them and how we can perhaps make a difference to solve those issues.

For the past couple of decades, Education for sustainable development has been playing an important role in the international agenda of organizations such as United nations, IUCN, UNESCO to name a few. Government leaders and private sector recognized the importance of the creation of partnerships in order to bring about the change in countries suffering with poverty, food security, climate change and so forth.

It has been recognized that Education is the only way to raise human beings from being exploited, poverty and inequality.

"While we can draw upon experiences of the

past to solve the problems of today and tomorrow,

the reality is that citizens of the world will

have the task of learning their way towards

sustainability. Education is therefore central

to learning and to a more sustainable future".

(UNESCO, 2012)   

UNESCO and UN in partnership with governments have created important strategic frameworks such as the Decade of Education for Sustainable development in order to promote the vision of a more sustainable and educated community through different forms of education, public awareness and training activities. It highlights the critical role of education and life skills programmes in enabling communities to create sustainable local solutions to problems related to poverty and vulnerability (UNESCO 2012). 
Nowadays, with the advance of technology and Internet, sustainability issues can be easily disseminated through the whole world. Globalization has made great improvement on the way individuals see and relate to global problems. Who could imagine that one day we were be talking about the impacts that our consumerism patterns could make in someone else life living on the other side of the world? Information and education is the most valuable asset that a human being could have on his/her entire life and only through that we can really connect to the problems faced by the humanity.
Through education for sustainable development I was able to really connect myself and understand about the major problems embedded in our society, and not just economical problems but all other social and environmental issues that I wasn't aware of. EFSD helped to develop my ability to create my own process of embedding sustainability into my everyday life. Being able to imagine where I would like the world to be on the next 20 30 or 50 years and at the same time knowing that I can be part of the transformation through being a facilitator or I would say being part of the solution of our next challenges.
Having the opportunity to design this reflective learning journal through a digital platform made me realize the importance of these new revolution of social media to Sustainable development. Having the access of all different websites, videos (you tube), online reports and so forth has shifted the way we learn and also the way we build individuals capacity. I hope that this journey is only the beginning of my learning curve towards sustainability and perhaps it will help me to become a agent of change within my organization, community and environment.

Thanks 

Resources

ARIES. (2005). Framework for Sustainabiity. Sydney: Macquarie University.

ARIES. (2006). Shifiting Towards Sustainability: Six insights into successful organizational change for sustainability. Sydney.

Balch, O. (2011, October 10). Puma's environmental profit and loss – does it live up to the hype? Retrieved from The guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/blog/puma-enviromental-profit-loss-hype?intcmp=239

Baltemus, P. (2003). The concepts and strategies of Sustainability. Taylor & Francis.

Brown, J., & Isaacs, D. (2001, June/July). The World Cafe: Living knowledge through conversations that matter. Systems Thinkers: Building Shared understanding, p. 5.
Department of Environment and Conservation (NSW). (n.d.). Does your project make a difference? A guide to evaluating environmental education projects and programs. Sydney: Department of Environment and Conservation (NSW).

Doppelt, B. (2012, May 18). Business leaders need systemic thinking for sustainability. Retrieved from The guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/blog/business-leaders-systems-thinking-sustainability

Ecoliteracy. (2012, September 24). System thinking: Ecoliteracy. Retrieved from Center for Ecoliteracy: http://www.ecoliteracy.org/essays/systems-thinking
GreenCom. (n.d.). El Salvador: Making Environmental Issues a National Priority. New York: USAID.

IFC Videos Casts. (2012, April 18). Private Sector Matters for Development: Water. Retrieved from YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2zKD7FI0IO4

Johnson, S. (2010, September 17). Where good ideas come from. Retrieved from YOU TUBE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NugRZGDbPFU

Lappe, F. M. (n.d.). Ecomind: Changing the way we think, to create the world we want. Philapelphia: Nation Books.

Millenium Development Goals. (2009, June 7). Millenium Development Goals for 2015. Retrieved from YOU TUBE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=v3p2VLTowAA

PUMA. (2011). Clever Little Report: Annual and Sustainability Report. Germany: PUMA.

Stone, M. K., & Barlow, Z. (2012, September 24). Seven Lessons for leaders in systems change: Ecoliteracy. Retrieved from Center for Ecoliteracy: http://www.ecoliteracy.org/essays/seven-lessons-leaders-systems-change

Story about stuff. (2010, March 17). The Story of Bottled Water. Retrieved from YOU TUBE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Se12y9hSOM0

TEDtalksDirector. (2012, August 9). How we can eat our landscapes. Retrieved from YOU TUBE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4KmKoj4RSZw

TEDxMacquarieUniversity. (2012, May 27). Educating and Empowering Women. Retrieved from YOU TUBE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5zbBgwEj7hI

Tilbury, D., & Wortman, D. (2004). Engaging People in Sustainability. Cambridge: IUCN Publications Services Unit.

UN - Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2001). Indicators for sustainable development: Framework and methodologies. New York: UN.

UN. (2012). Report of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development - Rio de Janeiro. New York: UN.

UN. (2012). The Milllenium Development Report 2012. New York: UN.

UNDP. (2008). Capacity Development: Measuring Capacity. UNDP.

UNDP. (2012). Assesment of development results: evaluation of UNDP contribution Sri Lanka. United States of America: UNDP.

UNESCO. (2006). Capacity building framework. Ethiopia: United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

UNESCO. (2012). Shaping the Education of Tomorrow: 2012 UN report of Decade for Sustainable Development. Paris: UNESCO.

VALE. (2012). Vale Sustainability Report 2012. Sao Paulo: VALE.
Whitfield, R., & Hemmati, M. (2003). Sustainable Development Partnerships in the Follow-up to Johannesburg. London: Stakeholder Forum.

WWF Scotland. (2005). Linking Thinking. Aberfeldy: WWF UK.

Good strategies could change the World!

Having a good strategy means having a set of options than just a fixed plan. It works as parameters for programs and action plans, "A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a specific goal. Strategy is all about gaining (or being prepared to gain) a position of advantage over adversaries or best exploiting emerging possibilities" (Wikipedia 2012), strategies are a series of trade-offs between goals and values within changing socio-economic conditions. It most of the times sets goals for a long term plan in order to promote a synergy between all the stakeholders involved in the process of change, strategies promote partnerships, participation and a shared vision created "for the good" of all. Thus, strategies for sustainable development are not always successful, it needs a continuous process of measurement in order to guarantee its success.

A number of strategies have been playing an important role within the international context of implementation of  sustainable development. For instance, United Nations has developed Agenda 21 "to provide the bricks and mortar with which to build a more sustainable future" (Baltemus, 2003), the agenda set a number of principles to guide and help governments across the world to embed sustainability into their country's priorities. The principles are as per below:

1. Social and economic assumptions
2. Conservations and management of resources for development
3. Strengthening the role of major groups 
4. Means of implementation

Agenda 21 principles aim to instigate governments to create new policies and strategies integrating environment and development as a cross-cutting issue into education at all levels. It works as a tool for consolidating ideas and communicating a rationale or vision for activities. The Agenda 21 and The United Nations decade of education for sustainable development are good examples of world wide strategies used by government agencies to coordinate their own efforts and increase effectiveness of their programs.
Since Rio 92 earth Summit, all  countries around the world started to develop their own framework in order to embed education for sustainability into formal and informal education. Some of those frameworks were a response of international pressures from UN and UNESCO and they have also been created in response to specific outcomes required by national sustainability strategies (Tilbury and Cooke 2005).
For the past two decades. education has been put into the center of the discussions about sustainable development. After The Earth summit in 2002, the United nations and UNESCO created the Decade of education for sustainable development promoting a more sustainable world through different forms of education, training and public awareness (UNESCO 2012). To attend the objectives of the DESD, governments created their own strategic framework to foster sustainable development through education and learning to create a society capable of changes towards sustainable development. Different governments developed their framework targeting different areas of sustainability such as conservation, poverty or natural resources.
National Strategic framework sets objectives to be achieved in a long term within a country or state. With the formation of a multi-stakeholder committee states and local councils are able to develop action plans that suits their specific needs in a specific area. The Australian government, back in 2000, developed their National DESD strategy to adequate and incentivize the introduction of sustainability issues into their national education curricula. They started with the creation of programs such as Sustainable schools, where teachers had to introduce sustainability into their agenda and also into their teaching skills. The focus will be on achieving a culture of sustainability in which education for sustainability is reinforced by continuous improvement in the sustainability of campus management (Australian national plan 2009). The national action plan divides its major strategies into 5 core objectives:

1. Demonstrating Australian Government leadership
2. Reorienting education systems to sustainability
3. Fostering sustainability in business and industry
4. Harnessing community spirit to act 

It is clear that the government is creating a guideline of implementation of education for sustainability into all levels of society. Government plays an important leadership role working as an example through the change of its own policies, it also promotes the cultural change within higher education programs to foster sustainability into learning and teaching and also continuous improvement in sustainability on campus management. Creating a partnership with the private sector has also an important part within the National action plan, the objective is to foster capacity building in business and industry to plan for sustainability. Last, the government incentives the harnessing of community spirit with means the emphasis of collaboration with the many diverse providers of education for sustainability to help improve community and practitioners’ access to knowledge and tools. The government also act as a funding agency to many educational programs across Australia in order to promote participation and development of informal education.

Other countries such as Canada has developed a national strategic framework based on education for sustainable development focusing on a strategic vision to support the efforts of education practitioners and the need to empower those responsible for the implementation of that vision.

I think the most important part of the elaboration of an strategy is how and who is going to measure the result and impacts of it. If we take in consideration the private sector, large corporations are developing strategic frameworks to embed sustainability at their core business but at the same time they produce annually reports to measure and improve the impact of their business. Leader companies such as PUMA has been introducing a series of environmental, social and economical practices into their business strategy in order to guarantee their growth in a long term. The same process of conceptualization of a strategic framework could be used as a guideline process to introduce sustainability to an organization:

• Creation of a common vision: providing an overall strategic vision motivates stakeholders to incorporate learning for sustainability into their daily activities. It also provides direction and motivation for coordinated and committed action.
• Participation: Embrace the diversity of learning opportunities.
• Critical thinking: helping to develop a deeper understanding of interests behind the individuals.
• Systemic thinking: Integrative approaches, looking at sustainability issues in a broader, interdisciplinary and more relational way.  

Karl Schutte, who works as a broker for green projects and is a graduated student from MQU, did a presentation about strategies to bring about the change. He talked about five case studies where strategic framework was used in a direct and indirect way in order to bring about the change. The key point was that all 5 case studies had in common education for sustainability being embedded as a driver to change individuals mind set about the problem in context. One of the case studies that caught my attention was "Morro do Diabo" state park in Brazil where a conservation area of the remnant Atlantic forest was threatened by settlement of landless peasant. The ICR (institute for ecological research) which had been working to preserve the area wanted to find a way to accommodate the peasant and at the same time preserve the forest. The challenge was to create a program where ICR would help the homeless peasant to develop and build their capacity about the environmental impacts that their agricultural activities could cause to the forest, so to do that ICR developed an educational program in order to educate the families about conservation and agricultural techniques. The educational program constantly reinforce the c complementary and mutually dependant nature of human interests and human needs. What I really have absorbed from this case study was the power of education to change individual's behaviour and at the same time empower them to make wiser and better decisions towards the environment. It had a short term objective to preserve the forest and accommodate the homeless people but it had exceptional impact on the long term conservation plan with the creation of the largest reforestation corridor in Brazil and also created a auto suficiente community who understands the importance of the nature and its preservation. 

Partnerships for life...

  

"If we get the essence of partnership right we will really make a difference" (IFC 2011). The video above really show us a way to address one of the biggest problems the whole world is facing today and if nothing is done will become even worse in the future. Clean water availability, in many cases, is a "luxury" not available to all of us, according to researchers in this sector, 1 billion people has no access to clean water around the world and that is because different sectors of our society has privilege of the use and access of clean water. Agriculture is the sector which has the highest level water usage in the whole world because its process demand a high use, however if technologies and process are improved and maximized the water usage could drop dramatically and other people around the world would have a fairer access of this so important resource. The reason I am using "water" as an example is because most of this deregulation comes from a non communication between private sector, public sector and the community. The formation of partnership to solve problems like this is seen by UN and UNESCO as the answer for long term results, The earth summit held in South Africa back in 2002 says, "It has been pointed out numerous times that partnerships are but one strategy, one part of the effort of implementing sustainable development, based, everytime on careful analysis of the problems and strategic options at hand". Since Rio+5, United Nations has pointed that the formation of partnerships is essential  to achieve implementation and results of sustainable practices not achievable by governments or private organizations alone.
Partnerships can be found on our everyday life at home with our family, at our workplace and within our community. They are often used with the purpose of solving problems with solutions that are common for all differents parts involved on a certain issue, not different from that definition, partnerships are going to be used as an agreement between one or more partners to work together to achieve common aims.
The United Nations has classified levels of partnership as Type I and Type II.

• Type I is referred to formal government partnerships in order to fulfill agreed commitments, such partnerships can be exemplified with the commitment of every country to eradicate poverty as a matter of urgency. (UNCSD 2012)

• Type II is referred to voluntary partnerships which can be integrated by governments, international organizations or major groups. These partnerships translate political commitments into actions and shared ownership. They can be exemplified with NGO's programs and private sector involvement on social and environmental issues.   

Since the 2002 world summit on sustainable development over 290 Type II partnerships have been formed targeting themes relevant to sustainability, from health to consumption and poverty (IUCN 2004).
Partnership creation is all about the creation of a new level of stakeholders participation in order to break hierarchy levels, power institutions and promote synergy among partners. It also creates a shared vision between the partners facilitating and inspiring them to work together towards sustainability.
During the last convention for sustainable development held in Rio de Janeiro June this year, partnership played an important role during their discussions with great emphasis on a bigger participation of the public sector in order to promote and implement sustainability practices.
"We acknowledge that the implementation of sustainable development will depend on the active engagement of both the public and the private sectors. We recognize that the active participation of the private sector can contribute to the achievement of sustainable development, including through the important tool of public-private partnerships" (UNCSD 2012), that important participation is regulated by a framework called United Nations global compact which measures business practices and also work as a guide for the private sector.

The video above was extracted from UNDP.org and represents a grreat example of the commitment and importance of formations of partnerships across the world.
Partnerships made by NGOs and government are usually on times of extremely need or catastrophe where NGOs come to help the country get back to its feet. During one of our workshops we had to study a case from El Salvador where the participation of an NGO was essential for the reconstructions of a country just after the devastation of a civil war held for more than 10 years. The NGO involved in that case was USAID with the support of GreenCom, the program was called "making environmental issues a national priority" because after the war problems with water supply, sanitation and agriculture were major issues in El Salvador. The program was divided into two phases, first phase was called "communication and education" focusing specially to create a capacity building program for teachers from secondary and high school and also to ensure the coverage of environmental issues at the schools. Second phase was called "Community mobilization on water" focusing on raising awareness about water consumption and preservations with local farmers and population. The big lesson learnt from that partnership was the high level of engagement of a multi-level stakeholder in order to achieve immediate and long terms objectives. Multi stakeholders is another tool introduced by the United Nations in 2002 which consists in evolving a range of significant actors in a given area of work, involving partners in a early stage but also be open to others to join.
Though to attach the workshop activity so you can all have an idea of the program.

Where every action counts...

We perhaps have lost faith in each other, or maybe some of us have created this barrier not to see what is happening out there. Thankfully many of us still have the faith and believe that we are capable of bringing about the change and together we can minimize our impact at home and at work. The picture above shows  great initiative from ABC channel trying to reduce their waste by promoting the reuse of  cups at their internal cafeteria. 

The initiative not just reduce their waste generation but also makes us think about all the materials and resources that could possible go into our everyday cup of coffee. Things like that really instigates individuals to start asking question about the product they consume and also about the organizations who provides those products.

“Think globally, act locally.”

Where good ideas come from? Systems thinking

In order to achieve Sustainability individuals, government private sector and community have to start to look at problems as a whole. Breaking problems into pieces just give us simple answers to problems that we make look easier. The video above "where good ideas come from" shows us how powerful a good and innovative idea could be into our complex problems. 

The challenges faced by humanity is no longer a responsibility of just one person one country or one organization. Our actions within our local community has a reflection on other living on the other side of the world. Through my learning journey trying to understand the root causes of our environmental social and economical problems has brought me a special way of looking at small situations and to understand their consequences into our and future generations. At this stage, education is the answer for a huge part of our challenges and certainly will help our future generation to make wiser decisions than we have made. UNESCO (2012) contributes to this affirmation as per following:

"It is becoming clear that the search for sustainability

cannot be limited to classrooms, the corporate

boardroom, a local environmental education centre

or a regional government authority, all operating

in isolation. Instead, learning in the context

of sustainability requires cooperation and synergy

between multiple actors in society and the blending

of formal, non-formal and informal education.

Opportunities for this type of cross-boundary

learning expand with increased permeability between

units, disciplines, generations, cultures, institutions,

sectors and so on".