With globalization and its profound and irreversible effects, the challenge of proper development in countries is increasingly present in the actions of the international community: this is what is known as development aid. It can be defined as “all resources provided to poor countries with the declared goal of fostering economic development and improving the standard of living of their inhabitants.” (Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan, 2011). This aid faces rapid changes, uncertainty, and growing interdependence. Notably today, through the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, organizations attempt to address economic, social, and ecological changes (climate change, interculturality, economic interdependence, etc.): the eradication of poverty, the fight against hunger, access to health, access to quality education, gender equality, access to clean water and sanitation, the use of renewable energy, access to decent jobs, innovation and infrastructure, reduction of inequalities, sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption, climate action, the protection of aquatic and terrestrial flora and fauna, justice and peace, and partnerships for global objectives.

As previously mentioned in the internship report, working with Objectif Sciences International allowed me to discover more deeply the world of non-governmental organizations and particularly the role of education in achieving these objectives. Unfortunately, even if everyone seems to agree on its importance, longstanding issues surrounding its conception and implementation hinder its effectiveness. Schooling has become a victim of its own success; the difficulty of its implementation makes it hard to adapt to the evolving world, technologies, knowledge, and sciences. Indeed, the teaching profession remains isolated: without continuous training, lacking its own development, and without shared new methods, even at the level of international standards. It seems necessary to rethink it in terms of sustainability and authenticity to make it a relevant and real factor in sustainable development. Recognizing this, a question emerged: “To what extent could alternative educational methods adapted to 21^st-century skills be more beneficial for the SDGs?”

To answer this question, we will first examine how education has been stalled for several years and why it is no longer effective, before looking at different alternative education systems and analyzing their benefits for today’s and tomorrow’s world.

 THE BLOCKAGE OF EDUCATION

The increase in interdependence in the 21^st century has created a need for intercultural cooperation and, therefore, an improvement in everyone’s communication skills. To meet this challenge of keeping pace with global development and acquiring these socio-emotional skills, new educational methods are necessary. Unfortunately, the values and pedagogical and sociological impact of education are understood over the long term and take time. Currently, the state of education is stuck in an outdated mode, disconnected from reality.

  An Old System

When primary education is mandatory, school is not the only educational institution; religion, as well as agricultural and/or household work, play an important role in children’s lives. Gradually, these rhythms of life ceased in various countries with the industrial revolutions in the 19^th century, and the current educational forms emerged (classrooms, institutions, grading...). This system was established during that period by philanthropists and engineers with the goal of filling factories created during the industrial revolution with educated and knowledgeable people. This industrial education laid its foundations on obedience, individualism, and competition. In addition to preparing individuals for industries, this education enabled them to break free from the strong family and religious oversight. Often centralized and unified, school is a set path. For better socialization and social integration, kindergarten begins at the age of 3 or 4, followed by mandatory attendance in primary school, which provides “fundamental education.” This is seen as essential to ensure that students exhibit behaviors suitable to society and the environment. The general secondary track is often valued, unlike technical and vocational tracks, which are still poorly regarded and are seen as tracks for those who do not succeed in school (according to its criteria). The educational format established, based on scientific knowledge considered authoritative, has imposed impersonal obligations and a division of knowledge by “age and level brackets,” giving school a socio-political function: a utilitarian view of education.

School regulation is based on a hierarchical and bureaucratic model financed and produced by the State. The school is supervised by the administrative systems of local authorities. These authorities, lacking in pure pedagogy expertise, nevertheless evaluate the educational needs of the population, recruit new teachers, give directions, set salaries, determine curricula, and implement evaluation criteria. This system promotes acceptance of authority and obedience to it. As André Carel (2004) states in his work: “Authority, on the other hand, is incompatible with persuasion, which presupposes equality and operates through argumentation. (...) The authoritarian relationship between the commander and the commanded is not based on a common reason, nor on the power of the commander; what they have in common is the hierarchy itself, which both recognize as just and legitimate, and in which both have their predetermined place.” Thus, it is clear that an educational system cannot be based on authority, which hinders sharing and collaboration. There is a total lack of freedom and choice for students, parents, and even teachers.

Finally, the evaluation system is very similar across countries and has remained largely unchanged for many years. In this context, the main concern for students is merely academic success by acquiring a specific list of knowledge: the concept of failure is not reconsidered. There is an automatic relationship between academic achievements and life trajectory. However, academic success is more dependent on intra- and extra-curricular events as well as on the educational tools used, which may or may not suit the student (such as the evaluation mode). The latter, too, has failed to evolve in line with digital and computer revolutions. Most of the evaluation methods used today are completely outdated and obsolete: multiple-choice questionnaires, for instance, do not allow for freedom of expression or understanding of others’ perspectives, which is why students are either in total success or failure (in terms of grades). Students’ academic and professional paths are determined by numerical grades that assess personal characteristics, such as logic in mathematics. If they do not meet the system’s predefined expectations and thus have “poor grades,” they will not advance to higher levels due to a lack of interest, concentration, intelligence, etc. Even though this evaluation method, favoring competition, does not seem appropriate for today’s world and everyone, countries that have primarily relied on immediate observation of students are increasingly turning to numerical grading. This ranking assigns a role, a place in the class, and therefore a place in society, without considering the stressful, demotivating factor focused on rational fields and disconnected from creative domains. Some are advantaged by this grading system, certainly, but are not necessarily motivated by learning and knowledge. Control motivates students for the wrong reasons.

While recent crises have shown that the current world needs professions that meet the natural and essential needs of the planet and humanity, the “right education” leading to that is not reconsidered. A blockage is latent in the field of education, causing social reproduction and an increase in inequalities.

  A Profession “In Its Own Right”

Just like the educational system, the teaching profession is currently stuck in old preconceptions at a major crossroads in its evolution. As societies become increasingly complex, it must undergo necessary restructuring to keep up with global changes. An international survey on teaching (the OECD’s TALIS) clearly illustrates this by asking questions about the evolution of this profession, from which we have drawn the key points to be discussed in this section.

First, the majority of teachers follow a very limited and closed vision of the role and place of school: the student, at all costs, needs the knowledge taught in educational institutions. Only this place can provide it. Along with this mindset, a significant part of teaching does not employ new, alternative pedagogical practices that would enhance the learning of skills needed in the 21^st century. Only 60 percent occasionally use alternative practices aimed at improving teaching clarity, classroom management, cognitive practices, digital teaching techniques, information and communication technologies (ICT), as well as working in small groups on complex projects that require independent thinking. Among these teachers, only 30% feel effective in these areas and educational methods, mainly due to student participation. Yet, paradoxically, more than four-fifths of teachers and professors have complete confidence in their ability to teach values and knowledge essential for students’ lives. This contradiction raises questions about the desire to evolve the profession.

We note that teaching is almost the only profession—although one of the most important—that lacks mandatory ongoing training: it’s a choice. Likewise, becoming a school principal does not require pedagogical training in many countries: this affects 17% of schools! As in Quebec, all countries need an integrated teacher training framework for developing a new way of viewing teaching, organizing flexible career plans with a reflective teaching model. Unfortunately, this is done in very few countries, and this blocks the profession and hinders its progress: there is no incentive to innovate or be mobile... This transition needs to be desired through a re-evaluation of all educational staff, as it will be costly in terms of time, financial resources, and will involve significant structural change.

Current education policies assign teachers a role with minimal competencies: they are seen as the transmitters of a curriculum designed by the state public administration. This profession, supposed to be at the center of the education process, responsible for empowering students and analyzing their needs, remains locked in a state of “semi-professionalization.” It is solitary work that assigns little importance to the sharing of practices among teams, is not guided by more experienced and qualified professionals, and offers little scope for advancement and mobility. Teachers should be given a real profession, aiming for an open professionalism with teachers and educators who have a voice and real projects that bring genuine solutions and real opportunities for growth: leaders, innovators, analysts of situations, etc.

With the professionalization of this occupation, the competent authorities and the concerned population (parents, students, etc.) will grant teachers trust and freedom. They will therefore have to address both the general objectives of teaching and also curriculum reform and pedagogical approaches, having a place in dialogue at all levels. These major structural changes will encourage innovative ideas within institutions, allowing room for the choices of teaching teams. The core of this modernization will be implemented in a decentralized, flexible, and long-term manner, ultimately leading to an educational approach that is active and project-based rather than following a precise curriculum.

  International Measures Disconnected from Reality

Major international institutions try to approach an ideal of education set out by the SDGs. Although the primary aim is to align more closely with the skills needed to live in the world of tomorrow through programs and plans for equal, fair access to education for all, these international organizations often remain disconnected and distant from reality. This issue stems from the fact that it is very difficult to challenge a complex system that has taken time to build. As Jean-Emile Charlier (2003) says, “The influence of IOs on education policies is more evident than analyzed.” Despite significant developments in recent years coming from two movements: the progressive decentralization of resource management needed for education and the introduction of competition among schools via reward systems. And although there is an attempt to separate financial oversight from decision-making in educational activities, an external evaluation method persists: contractual obligations, mandatory adherence to a specific curriculum, a centralized certification system...

In industrialized societies, educational opportunities still depend too heavily on social background, personal skills, and attributes, and therefore do not allow for a socially harmonious education accessible to all. Education is also not inclusive enough; students with special needs are often sidelined: we have reached the limit of integration and need to move to the next stage. To change this, this dilemma would need to become a priority subject for sociological research and political debate, which is not the case, and this is true for almost all countries, with a few rare exceptions such as Canada.

The realization of Education for All (EFA) by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) aims to place quality, inclusive education at the heart of development. Its goal is to increase access, equity, and the quality of education worldwide to build skills and knowledge in areas essential for the planet’s well-being: sustainable development, major diseases like HIV, human rights, and more. By working with governments, UNESCO seeks to transform educational systems and trends to make them more effective. However, these measures, though born from great ideas and goodwill, are not always adapted to all cultures and contexts. For example, with the goal of universal primary education, the quality of teacher recruitment has been very poor due to the rapid increase in enrollment rates outpacing training levels, especially in the least developed countries (LDCs). Teachers are trained through development aid agencies, which provide only minimal pedagogical conditions for supervising students, without quality training that is appropriate to their socio-cultural context. This example raises questions about the effectiveness and realism of these idealistic measures taken by major international bodies: with the poor implementation of an ideal like education for all, one might wonder if children were not happier, more educated, and more effective in their environments and in harmony with nature by living their lives as before. This is the significant implementation deficit of EFA: if countries lack the funds to take over the aid, education is neither quality nor effective, just as young teachers struggle to find jobs. This is why even international organizations involved in development, policy, or educational rights, as in other fields, must also be reformed to improve their systems.

This reassessment of objectives applies to all international organizations and across all domains: from the World Health Organization (WHO) to UNESCO, for instance. Within these organizations, two types of people are brought together: those who work in offices and those in the field, leading to two different perspectives on projects to be undertaken. On the one hand, those working within these organizations who come from field backgrounds strive to create intellectual concepts supported by educational theories linked to their field experiences. These individuals seek to reach a conclusion of a single winning strategy achievable by the organization. Field actors, however, come to different and much more varied conclusions because they adapt to different cases (regions, ethnicities, cultures…). This dilemma stems from the centralization of international organizations, which, in their desire to find harmonious and universal solutions, become disconnected from reality. One of the main disconnects is the absence of native language instruction in many African and South American countries: people speak languages other than the official language of the country. It is essential to ensure teaching and explanation of different terms in all these dialects: this would allow people from these countries to stand on equal footing in educational terms. It is a significant demand for country leaders to relinquish control for local autonomy.

To conclude this first part, we can see that the entire field of education is at a standstill despite the desire to improve it. Children’s education and their specific needs are entirely disconnected. Recently, the Coronavirus crisis exposed flaws: distance learning, non-classroom pedagogy with continuity, a contract between parents, students, and teachers, while it was noted that children considered “struggling” managed to make progress despite the confinement period. This may be the beginning of an awareness of the need to stop relying on a past model and to adopt a future-oriented model by modifying traditional schooling and teaching: making schools more inclusive with alternative methods suited to all and to the world of tomorrow.

 EFFECTIVE EDUCATION

After examining the challenges facing the field of education, the question now arises of how to improve this system by focusing on other skills such as personal development, critical thinking, creativity, and socio-emotional skills—the knowledge of the 21^st century. We know, thanks to children who are the future adults, and thanks to these skills, that numerous issues could start to be resolved: a fairer distribution of wealth and resources, a reduction in unemployment, environmental respect, and responsible consumption, among others. This should be a priority and a motivation to advance education! The challenges we face today do not allow us to overlook this any longer: education needs to become more efficient so that sustainable development movements can progress more rapidly. By incorporating elements of alternative education practices, reducing formalized learning, and emphasizing the principles of the continuum concept (which we will present in the next section) along with increased teacher training, we could eventually achieve this societal change.

  The Continuum Concept

For a long time, education was guided by instinct, a significant contrast to the current situation: parents and a system that neither trusts innate abilities nor the reasons prompting a baby or child to give signals. However, as previously discussed, the educational relationship no longer boils down to a master-disciple dynamic. Education occurs from birth to death and is more than what one receives in a school institution: family, cultural community, social environment, and the workplace…

In an extreme simplicity and respect for Nature, the continuum concept brings together all the skills and knowledge needed to meet the essential needs of humanity without breaking with Nature. To begin, let’s look at Jean Liedloff’s (2004) definition: “The human continuum can be defined as a sequence of experiences that correspond to the expectations and tendencies of our species, in an environment of the same logic as the one where these expectations and tendencies originated. This implies adequate behavior toward other actors in this environment and an appropriate attitude from them toward us.” In the educational context, the education-training continuum aims to reduce the discontinuity between education and training to meet natural needs. It is the redefinition and reconstruction of educational programs to reestablish the inseparable link between knowledge (traditional academic teaching), life skills (necessary life skills), and useful skills (the needs of today’s society). This continuum can be established by recognizing multiple ways of acquiring knowledge and skills through different pedagogical models (discussed below) and leading to individuals’ integration into their economic, social, environmental, and cultural environments. This concept resides in putting the learner and the knowledgeable person in constant contact: the learner observes the knowledgeable person doing or saying something in a real-life situation. This method gives meaning to the student and helps them understand that everything learned has a purpose.

To apply this concept within formal education, the relevant stakeholders must be given autonomy, and efforts to control every aspect should be minimized, as this only hinders meaningful moments for learners. The continuum concept is currently the dominant issue for Ministries of Education. They have three solutions: train teachers to build trust and reduce control, approach all subjects through practice with students, and connect them with Nature. This third point is essential to remain connected with reality because humans are, by definition, made to live with Nature. This can be achieved through letting go, allowing autonomy for teachers and students, who will feel more fulfilled. Once this framework is established, this environment will be conducive to both theoretical and practical teachings. It is an adaptation to each student’s environment: for example, if a community faces urgent agricultural needs during a challenging weather period, students and teachers should be able to suspend school to meet their and their culture’s needs. This approach requires continuity, exchange, and above all, flexibility in the curriculum, allowing children to evolve within their environment while teaching them to respond to their needs.

  Alternative Educational Methods

The best way to achieve a sustainable and effective educational solution is to find a middle ground between two extremes: on one side, industrial education, and on the other, the continuum concept. This would be an education capable of providing the same benefits as the latter while retaining the knowledge and insights gained from major revolutions, and at the same time, aligning with the needs of our current societies by imparting skills and attitudes adapted to surrounding situations. Several pedagogical methods have emerged over recent decades but, unfortunately, are not widely recognized or utilized. Let’s examine them now.

First, let’s talk about the Montessori pedagogy from 1907, developed by Maria Montessori. This educational method is based on sensory learning for children from birth to 24 years. Instead of placing children who struggle in a traditional school setting into a separate category, Montessori focuses particularly on them, and it is through these cases that she has developed a generalized method for all. This approach to teaching promotes progress and peace through a prepared environment, specific teaching materials, and an educator’s role that breaks from the norm. Based on scientific knowledge, Montessori schools group children by age groups known as “sensitive periods.” These periods correspond to ideal times for learning certain domains while helping students become autonomous and organize themselves independently. Today, this pedagogy is taught in 35,000 training centers, primarily in the United States, but it is still underrecognized. It demonstrates and helps teachers understand that experimental sciences should primarily be used to develop intuition, spontaneity, and creativity. In France, it was not until 2015 that the Public Montessori association was created to integrate this pedagogy into the national education system, even though this education has proven itself: Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google, Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, among others. Additionally, researchers have proven that students who went through this type of education achieve better academic and social outcomes. Jean-Michel Blanquer showed support for this approach as early as 2017. The effort is significant and must evolve.

Emerging in the early 20^th century, progressive education is influenced by humanist and Renaissance movements: Maria Montessori, Célestin Freinet, Roger Cousinet, Adolphe Ferrière, among others. This education method encourages active participation from the learner in their own training: learning is viewed as a factor of personal progress and vice versa. Thus, active learning methods should be encouraged: the spirit of exploration, curiosity, reflection, and cooperation to achieve this goal. All educational fields are important and should not be neglected throughout one’s school and even professional life: it is a holistic education, as much intellectual as artistic, manual, physical, or social. This active learning stems from the free choice of activities and thus takes personal experience into account. This is what John Dewey (1986) calls “learning by doing” in his work devoted to these forms of education. The first International Biennial of Progressive Education was held in 2017 in Poitiers, with the goal of sharing the fundamentals and practices of progressive education, discussing current issues, and political and social challenges necessary for a good education for tomorrow’s world.

This brings us to John Holt’s autonomous learning, where he observed how children learn to read, write, and count through their instincts rather than through traditional schooling. This awareness highlights that children, from a very young age, are manipulated and pressured by the school system, even though they can gather necessary and important information directly from the world around them. Contrary to Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction, all parents (regardless of their economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capital) can provide children with the support needed for complete basic learning. Schooling is not the only source of learning. This educational approach calls for a separation between what can be learned, the way it can be learned, and the academic outcomes expected on the same subject.

Now let’s discuss the “unschooling” movement, one of the most controversial because it completely defies all our preconceptions. Due to issues related to educational systems, seen as closed, industrial, bureaucratic, and unsuitable for everyone, some parents choose to break with the school institution: they see school as inadequate for their children. The schooling environment is associated more with closure than with openness—an essential concept in life. Against all expectations of conservative ideas about education, children who are well-supported achieve academic results on par with those in public schools. This demonstrates that one of the key factors in educational success is the attention and time given to the child, rather than schooling in an institution.

The last alternative educational approach we will explore in this essay is project-based pedagogy. Long underestimated and overlooked, it is now one of the most popular and recognized new educational methods. This active pedagogical practice allows learning through a concrete and authentic experience. Under the guidance of teachers, children are placed in real, current problem situations, which they must solve independently or in groups. For the learner, this pedagogy enables autonomy, experimentation, freedom of imagination, reflection, and personal strategy choice. This freedom naturally provokes interest and motivation, especially because the content and processes are adapted by the teacher. This active, inquiry-based teaching method includes seven essential aspects for learning 21^st-century values and skills:

• Proposing a key, open-ended question that is intriguing and interesting for the student, allowing for personal and non-basic areas of reflection and solutions.
• A deep understanding of concepts necessary for understanding the world, combining academic notions and real-world experiences.
• A learner-centered approach rather than a predefined curriculum. By freeing the teacher from the role of “chief” and the student from a restricted, obedient position, autonomy develops.
• Learning that is authentic, real, and current.
• Developing collaboration, cooperation, and communication skills.
• Motivation is heightened as the results are made public, outside of school, useful to others, and thus students feel driven to surpass themselves: more motivating, more socializing...
• Development of 21^st-century socio-emotional skills: reflection, critical thinking, self-assessment, metacognition, creativity, learning from failure, risk-taking, flexibility… All qualities needed in life and any professional environment.

In Quebec, there is again a network of alternative schools integrated into the public system since 1974. Since 2000, the Quebec school curriculum has based its teaching on project-based pedagogy.

  International Solutions to Be Implemented

As mentioned earlier, international organizations must take responsibility and play a major role in changing education worldwide. As early as the 17^th century, J.A. Comenius highlighted the value of experimental pedagogical methods and the need to conduct genuine scientific research on this subject to implement them. This requires investment, resources, expertise, rethinking an entire system built over years, and changing an entire profession. While they already spend a lot of time, energy, and money to maintain themselves and resist changes, taking a risk on a long-term project such as education is controversial. Therefore, there need to be committed, firm political declarations explaining that the introduction of alternative practices is welcome and expected.

There is a need to return to foundational teachings that meet the needs of each nation in particular and are feasible within today’s society, both economically and practically. With existing alternative methods, associations, and organizations involved, it is possible to find practical solutions and grease the wheels. Thus, we simply need to accelerate the process, which was previously implemented in centers, specialized homes, and some institutions. If all international organizations and NGOs were on the same page with a desire to evolve this sector concretely and practically, we could see changes. Instead of deepening the differences between various regions of the world, they should promote differentiated practices, like those discussed earlier. For cultural blending, equality, equity issues, and interethnic relations we face today, and even more so tomorrow, international institutions must evolve mindsets from an early age by integrating these aspects into ordinary schooling. The goals of universal schooling are gradually leading to a search for more effective education methods better suited to different countries. Currently, the door to change is open but remains difficult to pass through due to the questioning of established knowledge it requires. This critique concerns the values upheld by society and democracy: a transformation of the school space with a regime more tolerant of differences and implemented programs. Therefore, this change must be driven primarily with social and political objectives, which can only be achieved on a large scale with the full commitment of major international institutions that have the power to implement effective measures. Through conferences, contacts, and shared practices at the international and then national levels, schools could extend teaching hours, involving not only teachers but also socio-cultural educators to foster freedom of thought and perception in education. UNDP, UNESCO, UNICEF, or any other international organizations are actors of this change at the international level, and they must make practical, on-the-ground decisions with a continuous Bottom-up approach. If organizations, as we know them, wish to avoid revising their projects every year, they need to transform into federal and decentralized entities. These intrinsically embody the Bottom-up approach, taking into account the affected population and implementing diverse solutions: the most striking example is the successful functioning of direct democracies (like Switzerland).

Professionalization and continuous training of young people and teachers must become a strategic and operational priority to build effective systems in terms of economic, social, and cultural development. This education system will allow for a harmony between nature and human life, based on equality so that everyone finds their place and purpose in the future. This includes promoting international internships, sharing experiences of training and professionalization to create a direct knowledge exchange with the professional and social environment. In Quebec, a region highly advanced in terms of education and the integration of alternative methods, international youth offices are in place to promote these aspects. It is essential to know that today we understand how to train teachers in this direction; the scientific community in education has already studied how to organize these trainings. Radically changing teaching methods to adopt a single alternative method would repeat past mistakes: teachers need a library of identified relevant alternative measures available. This should be provided from their training, explaining that it is their duty to use these various solutions and how each should be used, with all necessary materials available—which aren’t necessarily the most expensive. To unblock this situation, education leaders must take the initiative to open more pilot schools with free rein on how to proceed. Observing the results, a shared approach with formal institutions is necessary to infiltrate these methods into the standard process. This avoids altering the entire system and provoking a crisis in knowledge and training. A sudden change, like the one that happened in Quebec, and a lack of training could hinder the introduction of alternative education methods.

UNESCO has begun work in this direction: it has published a guide for teachers in southern countries on how to teach with inexpensive materials, featuring a list of experiments addressing current issues. This can be seen as a scientific literacy initiative. It is what is known as “Community-Based Learning”: providing projects linked to a problem faced by society, which maximizes learner interest and makes teaching a service rendered to society.

To overcome the dilemmas of education suited only to a small segment of the population, a challenge must be taken up for the 21^st century: a change in lifestyles, aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, which starts with education. In seeking a feasible, sustainable, and authentic solution, we asked the following question at the start of this work: “To what extent could alternative education methods adapted to 21^st-century skills be more beneficial to the SDGs?”

By analyzing the major limitations of current education and its management, we understood that the lack of evolution in this field compared to others is the real problem: it is essential to continue establishing a mutual control relationship between society and the individual (principle of democracy), but not solely through authority, but through the sharing of knowledge and practices. It is imperative to stop blocking evolution and ignoring the pressures from new generations of ministries, parents, and even students. Innovations should be introduced for an increasingly diversified and respectful education that considers the student. Teaching must contribute to raising awareness of our Mother Earth and the needs of others and diversity. To this end, alternative education methods, particularly project-based pedagogy, are doubly crucial in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals: they give space to culture and spirit by restoring individual freedom.

It is with these convictions that OSI wishes to continue its efforts to change societies and government policies, as we are convinced that without international aid, it will be impossible. The organization’s stance is that all teaching practices are valuable, that project-based pedagogy should address specific issues, but theoretical courses, demonstrative experiments, practical workshops, and field trips are equally beneficial. Since 2008, the NGO has recognized that techniques developed for practical science education, serving the resolution of societal issues, are applicable to all other learning areas. Teachers, in particular, undergo training with OSI to support the movement towards project-based pedagogy. To go further, OSI has plans for school institutions and their support based on 100% project-based teaching.