Countries need special rural curricula to reach UN development goals, UN says

Providing livelihood-specific education to people in the rural areas of developing countries will help them to halve extreme hunger and poverty by 2015, in line with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations said today.

At a recent meeting on MDGs at FAO headquarters, case studies from Bolivia, Chad, Chile, Senegal and Tanzania showed that "living conditions of rural communities in different countries from Africa to Latin America can be improved when the basic educational needs of the rural people are taken into account," it said.

The cases were presented by Italian non-governmental organization (NGO) Associazione di Cooperazione Rurale in Africa e America Latina (ACRA), FAO said.

Community schools in Chad, created and managed by rural communities or by village headmen, teach rural people how to manage natural resources in a sustainable way, with teaching provided in local languages, not in the country's official Arabic and French, according to the study.

In Senegal, where 75 per cent of the population lives in rural areas, the Government's development strategy includes such priorities as improving teaching skills and adapting school curricula to the needs of rural people, it said.

In Chile, coastal fishing communities have been among the most deprived social groups in the country. New training courses are helping the fishermen improve their occupational skills, better understand the marine ecosystem, achieve fairer access to available fish stocks and obtain recognition of their rights and identity as traditional users of fishing grounds, the study said.

Many of the Chileans attending the courses said the programme is enhancing their personal development, while equipping them to support their children's education. Meanwhile, the artisanal fishing they do has a lesser impact on ecosystems than does commercial fishing, it said.