Preface

UNESCO on-going Education for a sustainable future" programme is an attempt to broaden the scope of its EPD (Environment and population education and information for development) transdisciplinary project. This initiative envisages among other things the strengthening of the capacities of youth, women and non governmental organisations, to enable them to promote educational activities at the community level and to increase public awareness of the need for a sustainable future.

It is in this respect, that the UNESCO Regional Office in Dakar (BREDA) collaborated with a non governmental organisation for research and development on population and education (Groupe pour l'Etude et l'Enseignement de la Population, GEEP), to conduct Environment and Population Education and Information for Human Sustainable Development especially for the benefit of adolescents. This involved an innovative approach taking both a generalised and an integrated method of looking at Population and Environment issues.

That was what brought together forty young persons, members of a Family Life Education Club who were subjected to a sensitisation exercise at a holiday camp in Palmarin (Senegal) from 5 to 13 August 1998. This manual is a result of their work.

BREDA and GEEP were able to build self-confidence in these young persons by making them play the role of peer-educators as one way of confronting the challenges of development. The experience has proved an excellent support for the learning process of the EPD. This success is very reassuring for the future, a future that we would like to render sustainable with the help of the EPD.

I am strongly convinced that this manual will be put to appropriateness by the persons for whom it is intended in order to facilitate the realisation of the objectives of EPD in Africa and elsewhere.

Pai Obanya
Director, UNESCO/BREDA
January 1999