The UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies will host the West Coast Celebration of the 70 Anniversary of UNESCO with a reception and dinner at the Skirball Cultural Center on Monday, February 8 at 6 p.m. UCLA is home to the first UNESCO Chair at the University of California. UCLA Chancellor Gene Block and Wasserman Dean Marcelo Suárez-Orozco will welcome UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova and introduce Professor Carlos Alberto Torres, the inaugural UNESCO Chair in Global Learning and Global Citizenship Education at UCLA. The event will also honor global philanthropist and education visionary Courtney Sale Ross, recipient of the inaugural UCLA Global Citizen Award.
“UCLA is honored to be hosting this once-in-a-generation gathering to celebrate the past 70 years of UNESCO as a treasured global resource,” says Suárez-Orozco. “This is an opportunity for Los Angeles leaders to gather and pay tribute to UNESCO’s ever more relevant mission in our troubled times. If we did not have UNESCO, we would have to invent it.
“Looking forward, UCLA and UNESCO will be collaborating to focus on a shared vision for building new models of global citizenship and environmental education in the 21st Century,” he says. “We are honored and humbled beyond words to announce the new UCLA UNESCO Chair in Global Learning and Global Citizenship Education. The work of the Chair will take the lead at UCLA in bringing global citizenship education to a new level of excellence, rigor, and relevance.”
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) describes its mission as it “contributes to the building of peace, the eradication of poverty, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through education, the sciences, culture, communication and information.”
Proceeds from this event will benefit a new UCLA Children’s Environmental Education Initiative — a new collaborative between GSE&IS, the UCLA Lab School, the UCLA Institute for Environment and Sustainability. Proceeds will also benefit the work of the UCLA UNESCO Chair in Global Learning and Global Citizenship Education.
The event will begin with a reception at 6 p.m., followed by dinner and program at 7 p.m. Tickets are $250 each; a portion of this price is tax deductible. Tables and sponsorships are also available; for more information about these, contact Amy Lassere at 310-206-0375.
To attend this event, click here. For more information, contact Scott Marden at 310-206-0375 or by email at smarden@support.ucla.edu.