Report on UNESCO's Community Engagement and Stakeholder Participation

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)'s community engagement initiatives. It begins with an introduction to community engagement and its elements, emphasizing UNESCO's mission to promote peace, education, science, and culture. The main body delves into an analysis of UNESCO's projects, highlighting its objectives, success stories, and strategic vision as outlined in documents like 37 C/4 and 39 C/5. A significant portion of the report focuses on stakeholder participation, particularly the role of youth, and how UNESCO encourages their involvement in various networks and programs. The report also outlines UNESCO's program areas, including education, natural science, social and human science, culture, and communication, emphasizing the importance of youth delegation and technical and vocational education. Furthermore, it discusses stakeholder engagement strategies, including identifying key issues, designing engagement processes, and strengthening capabilities. The report concludes with recommendations for UNESCO to enhance its community development initiatives by considering resources, developing international standards for education, promoting open science, and fostering cultural diversity. The report underscores the importance of collaborative approaches and building trust to achieve long-term goals in community engagement.

COMMUNITY
ENGAGEMENT

CONTENTS
Introduction................................................................................3
Main body..................................................................................3
Analysis of the project............................................................3
Stakeholder’s Participation.....................................................5
Conclusion.................................................................................8
Recommendation.......................................................................8
References................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Community engagement is the process of collaborative working with the group of people
who belongs to similar situations or who have special interest to address the issue that may
affecting the well-being of people (Attwood and Markus, eds., 2020). This is basically a way of
ensuring that all the community member has access the valued social activity and settings that
enables them to participate and contribute meaningful in it. Furthermore, it is primarily about the
practice of moving communities towards a better change or its empowerment. The elements of
community engagement are its culture, perception, condition of economy, social network,
demographic trends and so on. The most popular community engagement methods are focus,
online engagement, meetings, survey and groups. This report is based on The United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization which is a specialised agency of UN that
aimed to promote world security and peace through the global cooperation in education, science
and culture. Thus this report determines United Nations education, science and cultural rights. In
this regard, the report is going to determine analysis of project, their rights as well as
organisational best practices over community engagement. On the other hand, it will also cover
stakeholder’s participation in the community engagement and its development practices.
MAIN BODY
Analysis of the project
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation was founded on 16th
November 1945, having 195 members and 8 Associate members. It is regulated by the General
Conference and Executive Board. It has the headquarters in Paris and operates in more them 50
field offices across the world (Cipriani, 2016).
The mission of UNESCO is to contribute in building a peaceful culture, to eliminate
poverty, for sustainable development and to provide education, communication and information.
It works for creation of civilisation and culture among people based on commonly shared values
to achieve sustainable development enclosing them with human rights and eradicating poverty.
It focuses on the set of objectives and few of them are listed as:

• Attaining gender equality all over the globe.
• Providing quality education for all and long-lasting learning.
• Address emerging ethical and social issues.
• Encouraging cultural diversity and peace.
• Build comprehensive knowledge society with the help of information and
communication.
It addresses advance human rights and rule of law by focussing on right to information,
right to education and right to freedom of opinion and expression also to take part in scientific
progresses. It works to fight against the unlawful imports or exports and peddling of cultural
property and destruction of heritage culture. UNESCO has launched a global alliance of partners
for strengthening a powerful system wise action for the accomplishment of its mission.
UNESCO proponents for the promotion of human rights and related indicators by
observing the implementation of developing and strengthening ability and reporting operations,
assisting, reviewing and enhancing the national legal framework and to rise awareness for the
key issues relating to effective implementation of rights and education, also through the special
policy research and findings (Goodhart, ed., 2016).
Few selections of success story of UNESCO are listed below:
• It has preserved 1073 world heritage sites in about 167 countries across the world.
• It has leaded the global effect to reach quality education.
• It has coordinated Tsunami early warning system all over the globe.
• It led the reconstruction of the Mausoleums in Timbuktu.
• It has launched the SESAME world class research lab in the Middle east.
• It stands for the freedom of expression and condemns the killing of journalists.
• They have removed Angkor Temple from the list of World Heritage in danger.
• They have 11 associate members and 11,000 associated schools.

• It has published General Histories of Humanity in many states.
• 177 states are parties to the intangible Heritage Convention.
• It has built the youth networks across 9 Mediterranean countries.
• It has designed sites representing 10 million km equivalent to the size of China.
It has played an important role in strengthening the foundation of peace, equality and
sustainable development. The document 37 C/4 approved by UNESCO general conference
defined the common strategic vision of the organisation for the upcoming 8 years. This
document also translated a programme and budget. And as per document39 C/5 contains the
budget allocation of the program that will be allocated biennially.
Stakeholder’s Participation
Youth are the key participants and partners in UNESCO, as they play a vital role in
achieving its mission of contributing to build a peaceful, poverty free and sustainable
development. Youth have their major focus on its mission of compulsory education to all as
UNESCO was the first organisation of US to define and develop such a specific programme
keeping in mind for the young people. Youth volunteers worked in campaign to aid the
reconstruction of this programme. The UNESCO Strategy in compliance with and for youth in
the year 1998 (Meskell, 2018). It understood the heterogenous groups of the youth and their
constant evaluation and also the experience of being young. The behaviour of youth is largely
dependent on their environmental conditions and the degree of exposure in case of risk and
related strains. It provided the youth with the opportunity of engaging the development and
building up of peace.
UNESCO has encouraged Youth for the following:
• To participate in various networks and partners and to open up them with many
opportunities for all to listen and engage in communication.
• Participate in the organisation to solicit and amalgamate the views and precedence with
them for setting up projects and programs in the areas of the UNESCO.
• It provides the probability for the youth in putting the skills and capabilities to practice
the benefits of their peers and colleagues by supporting their civil engagement.

• They have reinforced the knowledge and promotion of research in the youth issues.
• It promoted participation of youth for the decision making and youth civil involvement
and social engagement form the start.
UNESCO is implementation its activities by five programme areas like Education,
Natural Science, Social and Human Science, Culture and Communication and Information
facilities. Education as it provides expert and encourages partnership in building national
education leadership and the ability to offer a better and high quality of education to all.
The social proportions of agenda 2030 and SDG targets the social inclusion and to
remove poverty and reduce inequality and participate in decision making and directly relates to
UNESCO’s mandate in supporting member state for managing social transformation (Morgan,
2016). The UNESCO consist of three main components: The General Conference, The Executive
Board and The Secretariat. The general conference is composed for representing all the nations
of the members of the nation. Also, the executive board consists of 51 Member (Wellman, 2018).
Another key innovation involves the youth delegation with the multiple and different
tools for reinforcing the opportunity by allowing them to be more operational to their country.
The forum identifies a series of procedures which are to be implemented by and for the youth
and is related to Operational Strategies.
UNESCO works in keeping the Technical and Vocational Education and Training
position on high political agendas. It helps in funding TVET so as to improve responsiveness to
the demands of labour market and individuals.
The UNESCO wide vision on youth operations through the strategy is communicated
three complement and transversal axes of work which directs the Forum’s work by policy
implementation and reviewing participation of youth. Ability development for transforming
adulthood and engagement of civil, social innovation and domestic participation.
In view of ongoing youthfulness among UNESCO as the key social capital presenting the
continent with the option to speed up the growth, reduce poverty and build a sustainable and
peaceful future. It takes into consideration the priority correspondent to and increase gender
equality as global priority (O'Nions, 2016).

The strategies of UNESCO are to promote youth for civil involvement and innovation as
the way of empowering youth as their agent of peace and key indicators for their communities
that assists them for making successful adjustments from schools to work places and prevent
violence.
UNESCO partnering with the global and regional countries, involves youth organisation
and seeks to enable the younger women and men to drive changes in their country and
communities as they are focusing on full involvement of youth in their campaigns.
The stakeholder’s engagement is the structured identification, planning, implementation
ang implementation of action outlined to influence the stakeholders. It is the strategy that
identifies the needs of the key people and sponsors that plays a vital role in making certain that
the organisations needs are met (Shields and Dunn Sr, 2016).
The participation of stakeholders in the UNESCO can be divided in five major parts as explained
below:
• Act, review and report- The planning and follow up activities, ensure learnings,
reviewing the engagement and assuring the stakeholders.
• Identifying key and significant issues- By mapping the stakeholders to identify these
issues, setting strategic objectives and prioritizing them.
• Designing the process and engagement- It identifies the most effective engagement
approach and design the process for it.
• Strengthened engagement capabilities- It strengthens the capability to respond to the
issues and developing internal skills also building the stakeholders ability of engaging them.
• Analyse and plan- It is done by reviewing progress, learning from others and identifying
the associated partners, learning about the stakeholder’s requirements and setting stakeholders
objectives and fulfil them.
This process includes significance, completeness, responsiveness, thinking and planning,
responding and measuring, preparing and engaging the stakeholders of the organisation.

UNESCO has been a successful organisation it is aware about the moves that will help it
grow and move forward. Creating a stakeholder’s map outlines who ally or foe to be a most
effective took for short term and long-term goals achievements. Their comprehensive
stakeholder engagement plan benefits them by building a trustful relationship among them and
letting them know the values that are perspective (Stahl, 2016). It is a collaborative approach that
helps in building a trust and goodwill for the organisation. This is especially useful for working
in the wake of crises, rebuilding trust and arduous process. It is also cost saving as engaging with
stakeholders can save time and money (Weiss and Daws, eds., 2018). The savings can move
from eliminating the roadblock and mitigating the surprise that slows the organisation’s process
and procedures.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been summarised that community engagement play an
essential role that determine the collaboration between different groups or individuals in order to
resolve issues or to develop community well-being. These kind of practices assist in economy or
community development. In this process, government, police and organisations work
collaboratively in order to create as well as raise visions for community’s future. Main objective
of such is to create diversity among community by promote ideas through international
interactions. In order to effective manage community engagement it is required to evaluate and
gather resources, funds and skills for its effective development.
RECOMMENDATION
By evaluating above findings, it has been recommended to UNESCO to take some
actions that may assist them in effectively implement community development initiatives. With
the help of this they can establish a change process for the further development of individual and
groups. The major recommendations towards such rights are:
 It is needed for UNESCO to consider the resource, time, funds and skills in order to
develop the community by implementing changes or developing collaboration with
others.

 In terms, of Education system, it is required for UNESCO to develop an international
standard that tasked individual’s development in effective manner.
 For Science, it is expected recommendation to share value and principles for open science
to identify concrete measures for its open access and data uses.
 In respect of cultural, it is recommended to develop diversity as create values for others
religious and their customs.
 Construct measures to map and leverage existing community engagement mechanisms
that could be red cross, immunization campaign and so on.
 It is needed for them to mobilize strengths and assets in order to developing the
community’s capacity as well as resources in order to make appropriate decisions.

REFERENCES
Books & Journal
Attwood, B. and Markus, A. eds., 2020. The struggle for Aboriginal rights: a documentary
history. Routledge.
Cipriani, D., 2016. Children’s rights and the minimum age of criminal responsibility: a global
perspective. Routledge.
Goodhart, M.E. ed., 2016. Human rights: politics and practice. Oxford university press.
Meskell, L., 2018. A future in ruins: UNESCO, world heritage, and the dream of peace. Oxford
University Press.
Morgan, R., 2016. Transforming law and institution: Indigenous peoples, the United Nations
and human rights. Routledge.
O'Nions, H., 2016. Minority rights protection in international law: The Roma of Europe.
Routledge.
Shields, J.A. and Dunn Sr, J.M., 2016. Passing on the right: Conservative professors in the
progressive university. Oxford University Press.
Stahl, J., 2016. Right moves: The conservative think tank in American political culture since
1945. UNC Press Books.
Weiss, T.G. and Daws, S. eds., 2018. The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations. Oxford
University Press.
Wellman, C., 2018. The proliferation of rights: Moral progress or empty rhetoric?. Routledge.