AROUND 150 youth leaders from 10 countries, including the Philippines, are expected to attend a summit that aims to transform education in the Southeast Asia region.

Among the participating countries are Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, Timor Leste and Vietnam.

The Youth Summit 2023: Transforming Education in Southeast Asia will be conducted on June 27-28, 2023 by the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization – Regional Center for Innovative Educational Technology and its partners.

It will be managed by the youth leaders themselves, who will share their innovations and programs and lead the process of reflection on how the Youth Declaration can be adopted and succeed at the classroom, school, community and country levels.

“These youth are truly innovators and leaders of the future. They have seen the challenges in education that either hinder learning or have identified those opportunities to strengthen learning and have formulated and conceptualized methods that could very well revolutionize how we teach and how we learn,” INNOTECH Centre Director and former Education Secretary Leonor Briones said.

The event will kick off with the Youth Declaration, where participants will lay down their collective recommendations on the transformation they want to see, along with their commitments for action on education. This will be followed by parallel conversations and presentation through breakout sessions.

INNOTECH invited the Ministries of Education and other development organizations to identify concrete recommendations on the youth innovations and working models.

The summit will be INNOTECH’s contribution to the Global Youth Initiative under the fourth sustainable development goal, focusing on education to employment, digital learning, youth leadership, inclusive education, civic engagement, and environmental resilience, among others.

“When I was Secretary of Education, we focused so much on uplifting and improving teaching conditions and therefore much of the focus were on the teachers themselves.
Here we see that promising and talented youth are as engaged and invested in their education in the same degree as the governments, policymakers, leaders, and teachers across the SEA region,” Briones said.