An international framework devised by the United Nations, ESD seeks to empower individuals to strive for societal change, as well as to adopt “greener,” more sustainable lifestyles as they take into consideration the future of the planet. This new concept of education includes processes that foster values, skills and attitudes that affect the individuals, the school’s and the community’s work in creating a fair and just society, economic security, ecological capacity and democracy.

The webinar led by WWF-PH’s Environmental Education (EE) team also tackled how the COVID-19 pandemic brings challenges on sustainability of the three pillars: Society, Economy, and Environment. Participants were also able to have virtual break-out group discussions as part of the online activity.

“ESD is still an unfamiliar concept of learning in the country, with it not being part of the Philippine curriculum system unlike other countries. Aiming to increase the uptake of students and teachers on ESD, we strive to continue creating avenues for them to learn more about competencies on sustainability as we are advancing towards project completion by February 2021. And amidst the pandemic, it is imperative to continue teaching our students the importance of sustainability and how we are going to fare through the “new normal” post COVID-19. This is also one of the ways in maximizing the availability of students while providing them new learnings,” said WWF-Philippines Our City 2030: Youth Visions and Solutions Project Manager Imee Bellen. Through online activities, the project team hopes to continue capacitating students toward thinking and considering sustainability when thinking about the future.