This book explores how education along with training and skill development are vital to building a sustainable future.

While half of the world’s population now is urban, in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the proportions of rural people range from 55 to 70 per cent. In this context, education is seen as a key instrument for shaping and fulfilling the goal of rural transformation.

The book focuses on the links between education and rural transformation, seeking to underscore the inexorable forces of change rural communities face and how education and training, by equipping people with appropriate knowledge and skills and fostering values of human dignity, can expand their choices and capabilities to exercise these choices.

UNESCO International Research and Training Centre for Rural Education (INRULED) decided to examine closely the issues of skill development within its broad mission of exploring concepts, policy and practices in education for rural transformation. The confluence of global forces and national situations, especially in the poorer countries and regions of the world, prompted UNESCO-INRULED to take this decision. These forces and factors include persistent and growing gaps between supply and demand for jobs and employment for young people, growing vulnerabilities and risks for poor people, threats to food security, and the urgency of building a sustainable green future.