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In memory of Ravindra H. Dave
Ravindra H. Dave, former Director of the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, has died, at the age of 94 years.
Dave served as the Director of the institute for slightly over a decade, from 1979 to 1989. Leading what was then still called the UNESCO Institute for Education, he sought to link research and training more closely, while building up a network of experts and institutions to make the work of the institute accessible to a wide audience as effectively as possible.
Under Dave’s leadership, a study was launched on the development of learning strategies in post-literacy and continuing education provision for neo-literates in developing countries. This project brought together two areas of particular interest to the institute: the promotion of education in developing countries and learning as a lifelong process. The project, in which Bangladesh, Brazil, Burma, Cuba, India, Mali, Nigeria, Tanzania, Venezuela and the United Kingdom took part, generated great international interest and was the start of the activities and regional seminars on this topic conducted by the institute between 1981 and 1986, in Hamburg, Caracas, New Delhi and Nairobi.
These research-oriented training seminars were addressed to practitioners who were responsible in their countries for the development and implementation of literacy, post-literacy and continuing education programmes. More than 250 experts from 89 countries took part in these seminars, and management and information systems were set up in 30 countries. Annual inter-regional seminars were held in Hamburg from 1987. The contacts made at this time were brought together in a Literacy Exchange Network. Dave thus laid the essential foundations for the work of the institute during the following decades.
Ravindra H. Dave's contributions to lifelong learning and his unwavering commitment to promoting education for people of all ages as a fundamental human right will continue to reverberate in the field of lifelong learning for years to come.
