GNLC Awardee: Damietta

A city can only implement lifelong learning if it involves a wide range of sectors.

Damietta adopts a coordinated approach whereby municipal departments – education; women, childhood and motherhood; youth and sports; social solidarity; health – work with local libraries, the city’s palace of culture and its media & information centre to ensure that lifelong learning is implemented cross-sectorally.

‘Taking the ambitious vision of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda as our lead, we aim to achieve social equity by creating a society in which all members are equal in terms of their rights and duties. By adopting the key characteristics of a learning city, we seek to boost development at all levels so as to to enable citizens to acquire professional skills, and to ensure community participation.

Learning plays a key role in equipping our citizens with the resources they need, and in supporting all social groups. It makes cities more resilient when they are called upon to deal with growing challenges and their repercussions. This is why learning is so important.

The city of Damietta has made great progress in this context by implementing the Safe Cities project, which aims to develop the skills of women in the city. The biggest challenge faced by this project was to ensure its implementation during the Corona pandemic.'

The learning city of Damietta has developed several initiatives that focus on empowering women. Through its partnership with the United Nations’ ‘Safe Cities’ project, the city seeks to create a safe space for women that free from violence. Initiatives include workshops for women on economic empowerment and management.

'Safe Cities is a developmental and educational project. Women can come to us with their children. We provide safe, suitable spaces where they can play. Through this project, women acquire the skills they need to develop their own projects, which empowers them economically and helps to enhance their income. Safe cities are friendly cities for women and girls.'

In conjunction with the Safe Cities project Damietta has organized six exhibitions to help market products made by women who work from home.

'I participated in the Safe City project and its activities. I have learned how to sew and crochet. I have started to produce some goods, and have acquired skills in marketing. The Safe City project has helped me to achieve a dream that I have always been looking for: to develop a project that will increase my income.'

The Safe Cities project also promoted learning to support personal well-being and good family relationships.

'As a homemaker, I have been looking for parenting advice, which I have found through the Safe City project. I have benefited a lot from its sessions. I now have the knowledge to take good care of my teenagers. In addition, the city offers learning sessions on psychology, and allows us to talk to experts on this topic. These conversations have had a positive impact on me, my girls, and the family atmosphere in general.'

The learning city of Damietta seeks to make lifelong learning opportunities more accessible to its residents by providing numerous spaces for formal and informal education. These include museums, information centres, training centres, community classrooms, the municipal Technology Development Centre, the palace of culture, and the Permanent Centre for the Gifted. Furthermore, mobile libraries provide reading opportunities for villagers in outlying areas.

Damietta prioritizes Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) through training programmes that boost citizens’ awareness of sustainability and the conservation of natural resources. The city furthermore cooperates with universities, young people and teachers to raise awareness about pollution and the sustainable use of water.

Providing all of Damietta's citizens with lifelong learning opportunities is a process, not an end in itself. The city will continue to strengthen its policies and programmes in order to give everyone in Damietta the chance to learn.

Damietta’s inclusion in the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities in 2019 has provided it with the opportunity to share its achievements with cities around the world, and to learn from their experiences. This international exchange will be key to shaping Damietta’s development as a UNESCO learning city.

The UNESCO Learning City Award was established to further promote lifelong learning for all and showcase good practices in building learning cities. It is conferred on cities that have thereby achieved outstanding progress in learning city development. All awardee cities have demonstrated best practices that lay the foundation for sustainable development.

The UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities (GNLC) supports and improves the practice of lifelong learning in member cities by promoting policy dialogue and peer learning, documenting effective strategies and good practice, fostering partnerships, providing capacity development, and developing tools and instruments to design, implement and monitor learning cities strategies.

UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities

Credits: © City of Damietta; Getty Images / EgyptianStudio