Cooperation
Cooperation with the Department of Geography at the LMU in Munich

Almost two months ago, Ms. Sunjidmaa.R, Head of the Environmental Education Centre at the National University of Monoglei (NUM), researched the topic of “Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)” in Germany with the support of the Hanns Seidel Foundation Mongolia. As part of her research stay, she visited more than 10 Bavarian institutions that offer ESD programs at all levels of education and exchanged ideas with those responsible.

During her stay, she was able to hold numerous discussions on the topic of sustainability with Prof. Dr. Ralf Ludwig from the Department of Geography at LMU Munich and Dr. Katrin Geneuss, responsible for the El Mundo certificate program at the Department of Geography at LMU Munich.

There was an interesting exchange with Dr. Catharina Denk, research assistant at el mundo, about the el mundo certificate program at LMU. ESD learning formats and methods from Bavaria/Germany were compared with those from Mongolia. The ESD learning formats from Germany can be easily modified for Mongolia and used locally. An important point of discussion was the integration of ESD into teacher training, which has not yet taken place in Mongolia.

In addition to a series of expert discussions, Prof. Ludwig led an excursion to educational projects on the LMU campus and to the Werksviertel-Mitte district, under the guidance of Lea Antony and Luisa Horstman. There they took Dr. Sunjidmaa on a tour of the former Pfanni site. Since the closure of the dumpling production site in 1996, the former industrial quarter has been transformed into a popular creative and innovative location with a wide range of uses and was awarded the German Urban Development Prize in May 2023. The topic of sustainability - in all its dimensions - is also very important there. The bus ride from Königsplatz to Ostbahnhof was already used for discussions about ESD in both countries.

The exchange between Dr. Sunjidmaa Renchin and Dr. Katrin Geneuss (coordinator of the el mundo program - Certificate in Education for Sustainable Development for Teachers) also served to develop possible cooperation in the field of school education for sustainable development. The focus was on presenting the status quo with regard to ESD in the training of teachers and university didactics in Mongolia and the question of how synergies could be created between the countries. To this end, a vision of a multi-storey education center was discussed, which could provide an anchor point for ESD content and methodology for all target groups (didacticians, teachers, educators and students).