Time indicated is Paris time.

You are warmly invited to the webinar ‘Teacher Voices in and for Lifelong Learning’ on 11 October 2024. The event is part of World Teachers' Day 2024 celebrations, and is co-hosted by the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) and the UNESCO Section for Teacher Development.

Teachers play an essential role in upholding the right to education. To ensure quality education and learning opportunities for all, every learner must have access to a qualified teacher. Therefore, teachers must continuously engage in professional development to navigate and respond to the evolving expectations and challenges of societies worldwide. At the same time, teachers are pivotal in transforming education into lifelong learning systems, acting as 'facilitators of lifelong learning' who instill lifelong learning values, dispositions, attitudes, and skills in their students and communities.

As active agents of change, teachers possess the capacity to influence educational practices and shape learning environments. World Teachers' Day is an opportunity to recognize the transformative role teachers play in education, to reflect on the support they need to fully realize their potential, and to reimagine the future of the teaching profession together.

This webinar will explore how teachers' voices can contribute to shaping policies and practices of lifelong learning and how this, in turn, can promote lifelong learning among teachers and learners.

SPEAKERS: Enver Motala and Irna Senekal (South Africa)

DATE: 10 October 2024

TIME: 14:00

The presenters will address the most important challenges presented by the multi-dimensional crises facing (especially) communities that are socially marginalised, examine how they are responding to these challenges and explain what these responses mean for an alternative social system that aspires to building a genuinely democratic and humane society.

Register to attend here

**ABOUT THE MOJA – AEHEAN Webinar Series**

MOJA, in conversation with adult educators in higher education in Africa, established a network that brings together scholars based in universities across Africa. The idea is that this network (AEHEAN) would grow across all the different regions of the continent. The main purpose of the network is to build relationships, partnerships and solidarity in adult education on the continent.

MOJA intends to facilitate and convene a series of webinar discussions. The purpose of these webinars is to support the development of the intellectual and practical capabilities of educators and their associates involved in activities relating to the study and practice of community-based learning and education on the African continent. MOJA's intention is to provide opportunities for such learning through developing the network amongst those who are involved and in the hope that the network will itself be generative of further development of these issues. MOJA believes that such a network will support the work of educators in the field, could influence their ideas and practices, their institutions and influence policymakers in this area. Most importantly it would strengthen the work of adult and community education where it is practised.

The purpose of the webinar series is:

1. To stimulate a discussion about the relationship between learning, engaged scholarship and community-based education in the context of the development (or under-development) and history of the African continent.
2. to provide an opportunity to educators in the higher education system drawn from countries in Africa to discuss issues which are pertinent to the work in relation to the issues referred to above.
3. to stimulate a greater awareness of the contextual challenges facing communities and learning in such a context.
4. to stimulate the development of thinking and the production of engaged scholarly and other forms of writing relating to these issues.
5. to unearth useful writings and other materials, such as podcasts, webinars, and audio-visual materials which would be useful for the further development of an understanding of these issues.

MOJA will invite presenters who are familiar with and have experience in this area of work and distribute materials which are relevant to each webinar discussion to enable participants to engage with such materials in preparation for the webinars.

To support the purpose outlined above, MOJA is initiating a series of 3 webinars. These webinars will be facilitated by MOJA and its associates and will be rolled out over a period of 3 months. Following these, consideration will be given to the extension of the webinar series around topics that are relevant to and emerge from the initial group of webinars.

Key words associated with presentations: political economy; adult education; community education; socially-engaged scholarship; alternatives; social change; social justice; solidarity; praxis; co-constructed knowledge; climate change; community needs systems; livelihoods.

The time and date of the next webinar will be announced at a later date.