OPEN’s Global Education Programs Support the UN's ITU-DPartners To Connect (P2C) Alliance

Development Bureau’s Partners To Connect (P2C) Alliance

OPEN’s Pledge to Support the UN’s ITU-D P2C Alliance Validated By ITU-D

Over the last six months OPEN has participated in an advisory role in the P2C Alliance Working Group 3. OPEN’s work in education and education technology related to sustainable community development fits with all 4 pillars in connecting the last 2 plus billion people to the Internet and the resultant benefits of doing so, for OPEN specifically that is to deliver online education to the underserved everywhere. However, it was Pillar 3 Building Digital Ecosystems, and strengthening digital capacity building – for teachers, students, and government and community members in developing nations that most closely matched OPEN’s ongoing and future work.

P2C Alliance was a call to arms to give pledges as we all could to support the ITU-D’s initiative to connect and serve by building capacity through the training teachers, government officials, and students about new practices technologies that facilitate sustainable community development. This includes directly addressing and supporting the UN’s Seventeen 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through our programs. OPEN’s education and education technology work focuses exactly on supporting those critical SDGs and sustainable community development.

OPEN is honored that its pledge has been validated by the ITU-D Committee, will be promoted at the upcoming WTDC Conference in Kigali and in ITU-D P2C Website (LINK??) and we look forward to continuing to serve the underserved across our 11 and growing number of nations.

Partners2Connect Digital Coalition

The Partner2Connect Digital Coalition is a multi-stakeholder alliance launched by ITU in close cooperation with the Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology, and in line with the UN Secretary-General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, to foster meaningful connectivity and digital transformation globally, with a focus on but not limited to hardest- to-connect communities in Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

P2C Pillar 3 Building Digital Ecosystems – Objectives

Accelerate the digital transformation of societies through an inclusive whole-of-ecosystem approach that nurtures entrepreneurship, innovation, start-ups, SMEs, trade, and job creation, through collaborative policy and regulation practices supported by data. Develop and Support thriving, local ecosystems that drive relevant local education content, services and digital businesses – rapidly adopting innovations from elsewhere. The #Partner2Connect Online Platform serves as a key place for leaders to declare their organizations’ commitment to close the Digital Divide and as a “marketplace” to catalyze new partnerships and collaboration.

OPEN’s Pledge to ITU-D

One Planet Education Network Supports Developing Country Schools/Ministries

with Sustainable Community Development Education Programs

OPEN intends to continue to offer our 2030 SDG-related sustainable community development programs and services for our school and ministry and NGO partners in Liberia, Kenya, DR Congo, Malawi, Nigeria, Haiti, Aboriginal communities in Australia, and now farmers and schools in Jamaica. We not only include schools but Ministries of Education, Agriculture, Forestry, and Environment, local NGO specialists in Agriculture, as well as farmers now into our programs. We offer programs/curricula instructions by specialists on sustainable community development primarily focused on regenerative/sustainable agriculture citizen science research. We also couple that with live international distance learning events with special expert guests. We adhere to many of the UN’s 2030 SDGs in doing so, mainly to address hunger/food insecurity at this time, but also ecosystem restoration/biodiversity/reforestation, women empowerment and more. We connect all these countries together on a regular basis, and over the last 2 years have presented a series on climate change impacts and mitigation strategies using regenerative agriculture practices in soil restoration and water conservation, tying it back to our curricula/programs. We intend to continue to do so through the timeframe of our pledge commitment. We also offer a program on learning about one another’s cultures across the above-listed countries through the history of local music, and on music technology. We have gifted soil probes, rain gauges, Internet time, and hundreds hours of consulting services on these time-critical topics to set the stage for further work on regenerative agriculture, ecosystem restoration, while doing basic research on its effectiveness. We also offer data from Internet sensors from our paying schools which we have deployed with other strategic tech partners – Helium/Nova Labs, Ubidots, Seeed, and RAKwireless, and connectivity solutions from Imcon International.

We also now are offering from some of our paying schools and partners from the developed nations, ecosystem data from Internet sensor networks we have deployed that will inform these schools and ministries about smart farming technologies and precision farming. Sharing important data sets from environmental monitoring in other places will develop the data analytics skills of young students and community members.

This will over time assist in our effort to more quickly and sustainably regenerate soils, conserve water, lessen erosion, work to mitigate climate change impacts to ensure food security across our network of developing countries. Please see our Website homepage - https://www.oneplaneteducation.com also please see the Stories page for what we have been doing over recent years… https://www.oneplaneteducation.com/stories-1 Next we are working on obtaining funding to extend and expand our programs further in these and other developing countries, bringing smart farming lab IoT to them, with our STEM Internet Sensor development kits, and our mobile backpack connectivity technologies directly to their farms, school gardens, and ecosystems. This is all with the goal of offering more support and assistance than before to these developing community partners.