Being at the UNESCO 3rdInternational Conference on Global Cities was a watershed experience. I was simultaneously inspired by the robust, actionable hope manifested there, and utterly dismayed to learn there were no member cities from my own county, the USA. At the conference I met Peter Kearns and Denise Reghenzani-Kearns, who told me about PASCAL, and I met local leaders of Cork City responsible for putting together such a magnificent conference.
Returning to teaching Adult Learning courses and directing a workplace adult education program at Cornell University, I was delighted to see how excited my students were to learn about the learning cities movement. I stayed in touch with Peter, and I decided to act. Locally, I reached out to our mayor, and at the University, I proposed developing courses to involve students in partnering with area communities interested in becoming learning cities. When I returned to Cork City for their Festival of Lifelong Learning this Spring, I was fortunate to learn a great deal from Cork’s Learning City Coordinator Denis Barett, and Festival Coordinator, Siubhan McCarthy––both of whom were very generous with their time.
I am happy to say Cornell funded my curriculum development proposal titled, the “Global Networks of Learning Localities for Sustainable Development Goals.” My colleague, Marvin Pritts, and I have the green light to go head, and as I begin working on the course design, I am reaching out to the PASCAL community to link with educators and local government members already active in established Learning Cities. I would love to talk to you, and I can be reached at [email protected] [2].