Sustainable Development Goal 4 aims at ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. This goal ensures that all girls and boys complete free primary and secondary schooling by 2030. It also aims to provide equal access to affordable vocational training, to eliminate gender and wealth disparities and achieve universal access to a quality higher education.
Estimates show that, among those 59 million children, 1 in 5 of them had dropped out and recent trends suggest that 2 in 5 of out-of-school children will never set foot in a classroom. The Sustainable Development Goals clearly recognise that this gap must be closed, even as the international community more explicitly addresses the challenges of quality and equity in education.
Space technologies can provide, among others:
Recognizing its unique role in supporting capacity building efforts and being a catalyst for a broad engagement in space activities in developing countries, UNOOSA has launched a series of initiatives directly addressing SDG4 like Space4Women and Space4Youth. Furthermore, UNOOSA offers, in cooperation with its partners, the support of Fellowship Programmes. This capacity building effort in educational institutes throughout the world have become a cornerstone of the offices to promote the benefits of space activities. The fellowships cover topics on Nanosatellite Technologies and Microgravity and are designed to act as motivation for younger generations to pursue a career in a space related field.
UNOOSA offers the following opportunities:
UN/Japan long-term fellowship programme on nano-satellite technologies - Kitakyushu, Japan
Fellowship programme for the Drop Tower experiment series (DROPTES) - Bremen, Germany
Unispace Nanosatellite Assembly and Training by ISRO (UNNATI) - Bangalore, India
As access to education is pivotal to improve quality of life and help equip locals with the necessary tools to develop innovative solutions to the core issues tackled by the SDGs, UNOOSA is supporting through its Programme on Space Applications six Regional Centres for Space Science and Technology Education in order to facilitate the development of local capacities in the field of space technologies. Located in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Western Asia, the six establishments are targeting mainly developing countries through their courses. To ensure a common standard teaching at the centres, education curricula haven been developed in major fields of space applications:
Satellite Meteorology and Global Climate
Satellite Communications
Space and Atmospheric Science
Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems
Global Navigation Satellite Systems
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