Training Workshop for Teachers: Strengthening Education on World and Local Heritage

As part of the extension of the celebration of the 50^th anniversary of the Convention for the Protection of World Heritage, the National Commission for UNESCO organized, under the coordination of Professor Amadou Camara, a workshop which began the day before yesterday, Monday July 31 and will continue until August 2, 2023 The general objective is to strengthen the skills of teachers on education in favor of World and Local Heritage.

The National Commission for UNESCO of Senegal, like the international community, celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the Convention for the protection of World Heritage, by organizing a training workshop on World and Local Heritage for teachers. This session, which started the day before yesterday, Monday July 31 and continues until August 2, 2023, has the general objective of strengthening teachers’ skills in education for World and Local Heritage.

The targets are teacher-pedagogical advisers from the Academy Inspectorates (IA) and Education and Training Inspectorates (IEF), site managers, the Department of Cultural Heritage, universities, training centers for teachers. The holding of the conclave is explained by the fact that the teaching of heritage is included in the school programs of the middle secondary. This is why the training and mobilization of teachers become a prerequisite for learning heritage education, for a good awareness of young people to the protection of common heritage by all appropriate means.

Returning to the importance of this session, Professor Amadou Camara, Inspector General of Education and Training, declares that “It’s a meeting that takes place on the occasion of the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of heritage that UNESCO is organizing in all the Member States. We are teachers, pedagogues, we need to revise the content and the process of our teachings all the time, let’s say to update and revisit the scientific aspects as well as the pedagogical approaches that we implement and on the question of heritage. which is a dynamic question. It evolves a lot, updates are needed all the time».

He pursues : “Natural and cultural heritage are threatened with all these conflicts taking place in the world. All of this poses so many threats to the preservation of cultural and natural heritage; so inserting all of this into the teaching programs is a way of educating young people about the need to do everything possible to preserve heritage. And if we do not preserve this heritage, we are going adrift. And to live and live well on our planet, we must preserve our cultural, social and natural assets. And, at the end of these 3 days of workshop, it is expected that the products which will come out of the various interventions, the debates, the elaborations and educational sheets, that all this will be similar and will be the subject of publication by the UNESCO and will be made available to teachers to strengthen their programs”.

MAO NDIAYE (TRAINEE)