Girl Guide badge awarded to Rio+20 negotiators

WAGGGS delegates have chosen to award a Girl Guide badge to negotiators who have supported the promotion of non-formal education at the Rio+20 sustainability conference.

The WAGGGS delegation of 24 young women made the gesture after efforts to promote the inclusion of non-formal education within the official conference text were successful.

WAGGGS’ delegates have worked with other youth advocates at Rio+20 to lobby for the recognition of non-formal education.

Success for delegates

Their success was confirmed on Saturday 16 June, and the delegates chose to award the Brazilian Girl Guides’ Citizenship Specialist badge to negotiators who had supported the move.

The badge recipients are Education, Health and Gender group representatives from Switzerland, the European Union, United States of America, Australia, Norway and the Group of 77 (G77).

The Chair of the Education, Health and Gender group announced on Saturday that the draft outcome document would include the words, “We encourage Member States to promote Sustainable Development awareness among youth, inter alia, by promoting programmes for non-formal education in accordance with the goals of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development.”

WAGGGS delegates Maggie Simmons and Emily Rodriguez wrote an account of their hard work to promote non-formal education in the Rio+20 delegates’ blog, where you can keep up with the latest WAGGGS news from the conference.

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