Southeast Asian Educators Promote Human Values in Sustainable Water Management

Download workshop papers and country outputs here.

Educators from the Southeast Asian region gathered at SEAMEO INNOTECH for a workshop on Developing Teaching and Learning Materials for Integrating Human Values in Water, Hygiene, and Sanitation Education, which runs from 29 November to 01 December 2007. The workshop is part of a demonstration project for effective values-based water and sanitation education practices in Southeast Asia. This came out from the urgent need to instill in young people desirable attitudes and facilitate behavior change for the sustainable use of water resources.

The workshop is a cooperation between UN-HABITAT and SEAMEO, with support from the Asian Development Bank. Rapid urbanization and industrialization in the region has prompted both organizations to work together in developing a new ethic in water use among schoolchildren. The workshop hopes to yield the first draft of teaching and learning materials that meld human values into water, sanitation, and health lessons in selected core learning areas. These materials would tackle how children and young adults should think and act about water-related concerns as they affect sustainable development and the promotion of human dignity, social equity, and culture.

Eighteen (18) participants from the education sector in Southeast Asia were represented in the workshop, namely Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Included in the workshop is a review of the concepts of processes involved in teaching and integrating human values in water, sanitation, and hygiene education. “We have to make children understand the inherent value of water through integrating these values in the student’s daily lives,” said Dr. Art-Ong Jumsai, the Chief Executive Officer of the Society for the Preservation of Water, based in Thailand. “We can do this by allowing them to observe nature, conduct experiments using water through direct experience, and learning lessons from the arts, story-telling, and songs.”

The workshop provides a venue for the presentation of selected country experiences and practices in integrating human values in water, hygiene, and sanitation. Part of this was a visit to a public elementary school in Project 6, Quezon City, where the participants observed value-based lessons. The output of the workshop would be prototype lesson plans for in-country refinement that would be undertaken with other SEAMEO regional centers. Eventually, these lesson plans would be implemented in various schools in the region.

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