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Workshop participants of Intergenerational Dialogue for Well-Being Futures, Mansfield College, Oxford.

Intergenerational Dialogue for Well-Being Futures: Reflections from Workshop

On 19th September, scholars, researchers and practitioners gathered in Mansfield College, Oxford, for a workshop on Intergenerational Dialogue for Well-Being Futures. This event was co-convened in partnership with the Journal of Dialogue Studies, which will publish a special issue (Vol. 14, 2025) on the same theme.

My motivation for guest-editing this issue arises from five years of work with the UNESCO Collective Healing Initiative. At the heart of Initiative are the Collective Healing Circles (CHCs), intergenerational spaces created in communities across Africa, the Americas, and Europe. In these circles, people of all ages come together to acknowledge historical mass atrocities, recognise continued wounds, reclaim ancestral wisdom and human dignity, transcend divisions, and co-imagine shared flourishing. They have shown me both the transformative potential and the challenges of intergenerational dialogue and inspired me to bring these questions into wider academic and policy exploration.

A workshop structured as a journey

Following an inspiring keynote from Youssef Mahmoud, former UN Under-Secretary-General, the academic workshop’s programme followed a deliberate arc:

  • Contexts – situating dialogue in linguistic, historical, ethical, grassroots, digital, and spiritual arenas.
  • Conceptualisations – examining how intergenerational dialogue is conceived epistemologically, ethically, and culturally, and how it can serve healing, and transformation.
  • Practices – exploring how dialogue is enacted and transmitted through arts, memory, and creative media.
  • Futures – considering how intergenerational dialogue might serve as a foundation for justice, solidarity, and flourishing societies.

This progression created space not only for rich scholarly exchange, but also for deep reflection on the ethical, methodological, and political dimensions of dialogue across generations.

Insights across the sessions

Several themes resonated across the day:

  • Transmission and transformation: Dialogue mediates the tension between preserving ancestral wisdom and inherited knowledge and transforming it for the future.
  • Agency and co-authorship: Who has the authority to decide what is remembered, transmitted, or reinterpreted? Intergenerational dialogue demands genuine co-authorship.
  • Dialogue as ethical practice: Listening, translation, ritual, and creativity are not just methods, but ethical commitments.
  • Challenges of reconciliation: Dialogues are often uncomfortable — grappling with guilt, silence, or denial — yet necessary for relational repair.
  • Futures through justice: Dialogue is not only about the past; it is a path to recognition, resilience, and flourishing futures.

One aspect that remains insufficiently addressed is the overwhelming domination of structural injustice, which continues to define the lived experience of the global majority. While academic research offers decolonial critique and systemic analysis, the challenge ahead lies in reimagining global governance that can respond to these realities.

Looking ahead

For me, one of the most moving aspects of the workshop was how much it echoed the spirit of the UNESCO Collective Healing Circles. We saw how dialogue is never neutral: it carries risks of stereotyping or tokenising, but also profound possibilities for recognition, resilience, and transformation. We saw how young people are not simply listeners or translators, but co-creators of meaning and futures. And we saw how elders are not only custodians of memory, but partners in reshaping change.

As we move forward, the next step is to revise and deepen the papers in light of the workshop conversations. Guided by the Journal of Dialogue Studies framework, the special issue will ensure that contributions are theoretically rich, methodologically and ethically strong, and — most importantly — relevant to the question at the heart of our gathering: how intergenerational dialogue can nurture well-being futures in contexts marked by structural injustice.

I am grateful to all who joined us in Oxford, for your generosity, insights, and presence. This is not the end, but part of a continuing journey to explore and enact intergenerational dialogue as a vital resource for our shared futures.

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workshop in mansfield college oxford

Intergenerational Dialogue for Well-Being Futures: Theories, Practices and Policy Pathways.

An Academic Workshop

19th September 2025, Mansfield College, Oxford

The Journal of Dialogue Studies, in partnership with the GHfP Institute, the Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace, UNESCO Collective Healing Initiative, invited contributions for a special issue exploring the role of intergenerational dialogue in shaping collective well-being futures.

In recognising that despite global commitments to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), progress remains impeded by persistent barriers, including transgenerational trauma, structural injustice, gender inequality, limited youth engagement, and fragmented political responses. In the face of these obstacles, intergenerational dialogue is increasingly important as it creates facilitated spaces for younger and older people to encounter and learn from each other. Such dialogue allows the community to draw insights from multiple generations, diverse cultural traditions, and rich cosmological worldviews towards building better futures. 

This special issue is inspired by the power and potential of intergenerational dialogue. It is a response to the call of the United Nations Pact for the Future, which underscores the necessity of equitable intergenerational processes and collaborative approaches to multilateral governance to ensure sustainable peace, structural justice, and inclusive well-being. 

International Academic Workshop Programme – Intergenerational Dialogue for Well-Being Futures Theories, Practices, and Policy Pathways – University of Oxford – 19 September 2025 (2)
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a global study on futures forming leadership

A Global Study on Futures-Forming Leadership

This year, the GHfP Institute has engaged in a global study, commissioned by UNESCO, to explore youth’s needs for leadership development. What marks this research unique is that it has involved youth co-researchers throughout, from identifying research questions, to designing the research questionnaire, from hosting focus-groups, to analysing the data and identifying themes and proposing recommendations. Furthermore, this global study intentionally focuses on the voices of youth from marginalised communities.

Over 1,500 young people across every world region contributed to this research through a desk review, survey questionnaire, focus groups, and in-depth interviews. Their message is clear: leadership must be reimagined. No longer hierarchical, elitist, or tokenistic, youth envision leadership as relational, dialogical, and futures-forming — a practice that is grounded in care for people and the planet. In fact, this study reveals that young people are already leading change today, often under extraordinary constraints, and more importantly, they are leading with visions of justice, dignity, and well-being that the world urgently needs to hear.

What Youth Told Us

  • Their concerns are urgent and overlapping. From climate change and unemployment to gender-based violence, mental health, and political exclusion, young people confront intersecting crises every day.
  • They are already leading. In their communities, youth are mobilising for climate justice, creating safe spaces, preserving culture, and challenging systemic injustice.
  • Barriers are structural, not personal. Youth are not held back by a lack of talent or ambition, but by ageism, tokenism, underfunding, weak civic spaces, and exclusionary education systems.
  • They know what enables leadership. Trust, mentorship, intergenerational solidarity, sustained resources, and spaces of safety and belonging emerged as essential conditions for flourishing.
  • They are re-framing leadership itself. Leadership, they argue, is not about power over others, but about dialogue, shared responsibility, and accountability to future generations.

A Blueprint for Futures-Forming Leadership

From these insights, the study distilled:

  • Three imperatives: address systemic injustice, strengthen intergenerational solidarity, and reimagine governance for the common good.
  • Five values: collective well-being, dialogue, relationality, justice, and responsibility to future generations.
  • Seven proposals: practical recommendations from youth, ranging from experiential learning and mentoring to sustainable funding and co-governance structures.

Together, these constitute a youth-authored blueprint for leadership that is capable of meeting the challenges of our time.

A Call to Action

Young people are not asking for charity. They are calling for recognition, resources, and authentic partnership. They ask institutions to:

  • Institutionalise youth co-governance.
  • Secure long-term funding and seed grants.
  • Embed youth leadership into UNESCO and partners’ core systems.
  • Build decentralised hubs for exchange and solidarity.
  • Leverage partnerships across sectors to scale impact.

Why This Matters

Leadership for the future cannot be postponed. The crises we face are urgent, and the creativity and courage of youth are already shaping the path forward. What is needed now is not another round of rhetoric, but a living covenant between generations — a commitment to co-create futures where dignity, justice, and flourishing are shared by all.

UNESCO’s Futures-Forming Leadership Report amplifies the voices of young people. The responsibility lies with us — institutions, funders, educators, policymakers — to act on what they have said.

Because youth are not the leaders of tomorrow. They are the leaders of today.

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scherto scotland ramos jayanti, at the well being forum, Iceland

Meeting Baroness Patricia Scotland during 2025 Well-Being Economy Forum

Scherto Gill, Director, Global Humanity for Peace Institute

During 2025 Well-Being Economy Forum, held on 8-9 May in Reykjavik, Iceland, I had a unique opportunity to meet with Rt Hon. Baroness Patricia Scotland, KC, former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Secretariat.

In our conversation, I have learned that Baroness Scotland’s leadership approach was particularly innovative and effective, especially three non-negotiable strategies for twenty-first-century multilateralism: build coalitions, seek prevention rather than mere reaction, and put new technology to work for the common good.

On building coalition for collaboration, she shared the example how she coordinated the signing of the Apia Commonwealth Ocean Declaration. Pulling together 49 coastal states, land-locked African members, green NGOs and the world’s second-largest shipping registry (Palau), Baroness Scotland secured the Commonwealth’s first-ever ocean treaty text, complete with 30 × 30 conservation goals and a guarantee that rising seas will not wash away maritime boundaries. The achievement was possible only because she had already nurtured ten country-led Blue Charter “action groups”, so the technical arguments were owned by ministers themselves before leaders arrived in Samoa.

That same owner-driven formula underpins the Connectivity Agenda. Instead of issuing top-down prescriptions, Scotland persuaded trade officials from five regional clusters—digital, physical, regulatory, supply-side and B2B—to write each other’s policy toolkits. The prize they chase together is a US $2 trillion intra-Commonwealth trade target by 2030.

Even inside the Secretariat she practised “co-create first, announce later”. The virtual Commonwealth Pro Bono Centre was co-designed by 14 least-developed members and six global law firms; on launch day Malawi’s Attorney-General called it “an invaluable resource that levels the negotiating table”.

Her focus on prevention rather than reaction was marked by her developing the flagship Climate Finance Access Hub. By embedding advisers directly inside ministries, the Hub helped small states raise US $384 million with another half-billion in the pipeline—money aimed at cyclone-resilient roads, mangrove buffers and drought-proof farms before the next cataclysm hits.

Prevention also animated Commonwealth Says NO MORE, the first pan-Commonwealth platform against gender-based violence. Instead of crisis hot-lines alone, the campaign arms local leaders with by-stander training, economic-cost calculators and a referral app designed to stop violence upstream.

Dedicated to the common good, Baroness Patricia developed a project aimed at “Strengthening the Adaptive Capacity of Coastal Communities of Fiji to Climate Change through Nature-Based Seawalls”. Traditionally, coastal-defence proposals from small islands can take 4 years to assemble and 2 years to approve. However, under the coordination of Baroness Scotland, this project took barely one year. Indeed, with the assistance of AI and scenario simulations, providing evidence pack, Fiji filed a full grant request to the Adaptation Fund in October 2023; by 19 April 2024 the Board had approved US $5.7 million for construction. The project will build the 4 km hybrid seawall, restore adjoining mangrove belts and train local youth as shoreline-monitoring rangers.

The Fiji seawall development process is a living case study of her preventative, tech-forward, common-good centred approach to multilateral governance.

Baroness Patricia Scotland stepped down as Commonwealth Secretary-General on 31 March 2025; Ghana’s Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey takes over on 1 April 2025.

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ecosoc youth forum. intergenerational approach to sdgs

UN ECOSOC Youth Forum, 2025

Despite global commitments to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), persistent barriers have continued to hinder meaningful progress. Amongst these barriers, are transgenerational trauma, gender-based inequality, limited opportunities for youth engagement, and fragmented community responses. The UNESCO Collective Healing Initiative, through its pioneering Intergenerational Dialogue and Inquiry (IDI) approach, uniquely tackles these barriers by harnessing cultural wisdom, fostering communal resilience, and strengthening youth leadership.

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To discern the impact of the IDI approach, the Guerrand-Hermès Foundation and Global Humanity for Peace (GHfP) Institute at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David have undertaken a three-year research study in 9 countries, investigating the processes and outcomes of intergenerational approaches in achieving the SDGs. This study engaged youth and elders, who are participants in the UNESCO Collective Healing programmes. In addition, the Institute also sought the perspectives of global youth on their needs for leadership development and changemaking. 

Emergent insights from both studies were presented in New York during the 2025 UN ECOSOC Youth Forum as a Side Event. The questions explored include:

  • What concrete evidence demonstrates that intergenerational approaches significantly contribute to SDGs?
  • How can international, national, and community-level policymakers effectively integrate intergenerational approaches in sustainable development strategies? 
  • What specific policy commitments can stakeholders (governments, NGOs, researchers, politicians, youth leaders) make today to ensure that intergenerational approaches become integral to achieving the 2030 Agenda?

Led by Prof Scherto Gill and our young co-researcher, Casey Overton, this interactive event brought together voices from UNESCO, academia, policy, and youth to examine evidence from the research projects, and highlighted opportunities for policy integration, such as scalable intergenerational strategies to bolster community resilience and social inclusion towards well-being futures.

intergenerational approaches to sdgs a

Amongst the findings presented are that today’s youth navigate a world shaped by global disturbance, climate crises, and rapid technological change, often experiencing fragmentation and alienation. Intergenerational processes and approaches can enable elders to better understand youth perspectives while supporting youth to reconnect with traditional wisdom, cultural resources, and collective resilience — key to overcoming obstacles to sustainable development.

These studies underscore the transformative potential of intergenerational strategies in fostering long-term positive change, bridge historical divisions, and promote youth-led collective action for the SDGs. It is precisely such insights that can inform policy development, by stressing the critical need for practical implementation of IDI and for ensuring intergenerational accountability.

intergenerational approaches to sdgs. montage 1200

Casey further reflected on the potential and limitation of intergenerational approach. In particular, she pointed out that whilst dialogue can serve as connective tissue, aimed at building bridges, enabling understanding and collaboration, power disparity can inhibit dialogue. For instance, IDI in some contexts doesn’t always take place amongst equals. Therefore it requires institutional structures and processes to systematically integrate intergenerational approach to social transformation.

The session received enthusiastic responses from the participants who both recognised the significance of these research studies and echoed the importance of IDI in their own national and local contexts, in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.

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Advancing Positive Peace in a Fractured World: Reflections from the GHfP Institute’s 2024 Achievements

The year 2024 was a paradoxical one. As global conflicts deepened and social inequalities widened, efforts towards positive peace, well-being, and collective healing gained momentum. The Global Humanity for Peace (GHfP) Institute has been at the forefront of these efforts, fostering transformative research, facilitating intergenerational dialogue, and nurturing changemakers committed to reimagining more just and harmonious societies.

GHfP-Institute_Annual-Report_2024Download

Shaping the Future of Peace and Well-Being

At the core of our work is a commitment to positive peace—a concept that extends beyond the absence of conflict to embrace social justice, intergenerational healing, and ecological integrity. Through research, symposia, and policy advocacy, we have sought to bridge divides, empower communities, and reframe governance structures toward values of dignity, dialogue, and care.

1. Advancing Research on Positive Peace

One of our key research areas in 2024 focused on the Pacific’s vision of an Ocean of Peace. Working alongside colleagues from leading UK universities, we explored how peace studies can support indigenous-led efforts to nurture peace as an ethos woven into governance and daily life. This research offers critical insights for regions beyond the Pacific—where tensions and ecological crises demand fresh approaches to peacebuilding.

Our commitment to positive peace also led us to facilitate high-level discussions, such as the International Symposium on Peace in the Middle East, which we co-convened in London, and a panel on the same topic that we presented during the annual Imagine Peace Forum in Iceland. Amidst the backdrop of escalating conflict, these platforms provided rare and necessary spaces for dialogue, exploring how relational peace processes can overcome entrenched divisions.

2. Healing the Harms of Inhumanity

For over three years, the GHfP Institute has played a pivotal role in the UNESCO Collective Healing Initiative, developing intergenerational dialogue & inquiry (IDI) methodologies to address the historical and ongoing harms of structural injustice. In 2024, our Collective Healing Circles (CHCs) expanded in communities in 14 countries across 4 continents, offering a structured yet deeply transformative process of communal healing and contributing to the well-being of future generations.

Our newly launched Handbook for CHC Facilitators & Co-Creators, presented at the UNESCO 30th Anniversary of the Routes of Enslaved Peoples, is now a key resource for collective healing practitioners worldwide. The CHCs—led predominantly by women and youth—are proving to be caring spaces where communities can acknowledge past traumas, restore dignity, and co-imagine just futures.

3. Rethinking Governance for Human and Planetary Flourishing

In a world where political and economic systems often prioritize short-term gains over collective well-being, we have continued our efforts to articulate principles of well-being governance. Our latest publication, Beyond Instrumentalised Politics, proposes an alternative vision—one where governance is guided by non-antagonism, equality, and a deep commitment to the well-being of all.

These ideas underpinned our plenary session at the UNESCO Well-Being of Future Generations Forum, where we engaged policymakers, scholars, and youth leaders in co-constructing pathways for a future where governance is not merely about managing crises but about fostering societal transformation.

4. Transforming Education for Well-Being Futures

Education remains central to our vision for positive peace. In collaboration with the Fetzer Institute, we conducted research into how relational approaches in schools can enhance student well-being. Our findings are informing global efforts to integrate caring and ethics-based education into curricula, ensuring that schools nurture not only academic success but also emotional and moral resilience.

As part of this commitment, we are proud to be a research partner in the Ethics Education Fellowship Programme, working with six ministries of education in Asia and Africa. This initiative is a testament to our belief that education is not just about preparing for the future but about shaping it.

Looking Ahead: A Call to Action

The challenges we face today—from environmental degradation to erosion of democracy, and to youth disempowerment—are complex, but they are not insurmountable. The work of the GHfP Institute in 2024 has demonstrated that peace, healing, and politics of dignity are not abstract ideals but lived realities that we can co-create.

As we move into 2025, we invite partners, educators, policymakers, and communities to join us in advancing this vision. Whether through research collaborations, policy dialogues, or grassroots peace initiatives, each effort contributes to a larger movement towards a world where peace is not just the absence of war, but the presence of justice, dignity, and well-being for all.

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harmony in education symposium

Symposium on the Centrality of Harmony in Education

July 2024 IF20 Education Symposium

G20 Interfaith Forum (IF20) has convened diverse interfaith actors inspired by the G20 agendas since 2014. Through dialogue, and analytic work, IF20 aims to enrich the G20 process by bringing the wisdom, experience, and voice of diverse faith communities alongside other global constituencies. IF20 Education Working Group (Edu WG), chaired by Prof Scherto Gill, has been actively contributing to policy recommendations relevant to the annual G20 themes.

For 2024, the IF20 Edu WG hosts an international symposium on The Centrality of Harmony in Education in the Global Retreat Centre, Oxford on 1-3 July. It focuses on comprehensive analysis in terms of how Harmony in Education may enhance interfaith/intercultural collaboration, positive peace, inclusive citizenship, climate awareness, and co-flourishing with Nature.

Harmony, in this context, is a philosophy advanced by His Majesty King Charles in his 2010 seminal book entitled: Harmony: A New Way of Looking at our World. The notion of harmony is extremely potent as it allows us to recognise that separation from each other and exploitation of Nature have resulted in present social and ecological catastrophe impacting all. Harmony in Education is thus an imperative for the present and future generations to learn to embrace our interconnection and interdependence and return us to a just world and sustainable planet.

The Symposium gathers IF20 Education Working Group partners, such as ADYAN Foundation, Guerrand-Hermès Foundation, Scholas Occurentes, Salzberg Global Seminar, and other international educational organisations, including King’s Foundation, Harmony Institute, the Harmony Project, Education Policy & Administration, Government of NCT of Delhi, India, and WES Networks Brazil, to explore how Harmony in Education can contribute to 2024 G20’s theme of Just World Sustainable Planet.

During the Symposium, each participant/contributor will make a presentation on their relevant work under the G20 2024’s theme. Then the participants will dialogue and discuss policy ideas around integrating Harmony Education in public schooling.  

Questions to be considered during the Symposium:

  • What are our understandings of harmony in the context of global challenges? How might we integrate harmony in our ways of being?
  • In what ways might harmony contribute to the G20 2024 theme – Just Society Sustainable Planet?
  • How can education help advance harmony?
  • What policy ideas should we propose to G20 leaders in terms of integrating harmony in education?
  • What case studies might demonstrate the imperative of harmony in education and its contribution to the G20 2024’s concerns, especially in terms of justice, sustainability and good governance?

Participants

Adyan Foundation

Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University

Education Policy & Administration, Government of NCT of Delhi

The Fetzer Institute

Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace

Harmony Institute

The Harmony Project

Global Humanity for Peace Institute

The King’s Foundation, UK

Pontifical Foundation Scholas Occurrentes

Salzburg Global Seminar

WEBS Association, Brazil

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Well-Being of Future Generations: A Co-Creative Approach, June 2024, Harpa, Reykjavik

UNESCO Symposium on Well-Being of Future Generations

Well-Being of Future Generations: A Co-Creative Approach, Harpa, Reykjavik. June 2024.

When our current economic systems effectively prioritise materialism, self-interest, and other misplaced values, a greater majority of humanity suffers. Some grapple with political antagonism and oppression, some experience racism and discrimination, and others struggle in poverty and marginalisation, and lack the opportunity for decent livelihood. Alongside related ecological disasters, causing catastrophic harm to humans and the more-than-human, such systemic and environmental turbulence has not only engendered a pandemic of ill-being amongst global youth, but can also have long-term detrimental effects on collective well-being in generations to come.

Despite bringing in technological advancement and increased wealth, in fact, capitalism remains entrenched in a culture of individualism and instrumentalisation. Such a culture perpetuates paradigms of separation, dehumanisation and inequality. Conversely, it also reflects a deeper crisis of humanity, namely a loss of core human values, such as respect for human dignity and care for our interconnectedness.

Well-Being of Future Generations: A Co-Creative Approach, June 2024, Harpa, Reykjavik. venue image

To move beyond the current impasse towards global transformation requires a fuller appreciation of what it means to live and act in accordance with our shared humanity. It involves a better understanding of how diverse social, political and grassroots actors can collectively respond to the myriad crises, and co-imagine common pathways for enhancing the well-being and flourishing of all in the future.

In such contexts, UNESCO Social and Human Sciences (SHS) Sector, in collaboration with Global Humanity for Peace (GHfP) Institute at the University of Wales TSD, convened an international Symposium during the Well-Being Economy Forum 2024, held on 11th June 2024 in Reykjavik, Iceland. The theme of the Symposium is Well-Being of Future Generations: A Co-Creative Approach.

UNESCO has focused its fundamental mission on developing mutual understanding, confronting contemporary challenges, and building lasting peace. UNESCO SHS Sector, under the leadership of Mrs Gabriela Ramos, has extended expertise in co-constructing just, inclusive, and resilient societies. In particular, UNESCO recognises that concerted global efforts are imperative to reframe the present existential crises as an opportunity for inclusive intercultural and intergenerational dialogue, and cross-boundary collaboration.

In particular, the Symposium drew insights from UNESCO’s focus on human rights and social justice to foreground an ethical approach to inclusive well-being policymaking. Furthermore, by stressing gender equality, youth empowerment and futures-forming changemaking, the Symposium advocated a co-creative approach to social transformation.

Card for the event. Well-Being of Future Generations: A Co-Creative Approach, June 2024, Harpa, Reykjavik.

In this Symposium, we gather significant interdisciplinary perspectives to explore how our global systems can be:

  • underpinned by the respect for the intrinsic value of every person and a commitment to the equal dignity of all.
  • characterised by dialogue and co-creation in the processes.
  • aimed at enhancing well-being of present and future generations alongside the flourishing of all beings in nature.

Through listening, dialogue and reflection, the contributors and participants will have an opportunity to give voice to the theme of the Symposium. In particular, the esteemed panel and youth will discuss how core human values and principles can inform the provision of well-being sensitive public policies, especially in education, equality and ecological integrity; the design of caring institutions, and the nurturing of futures-forming changemakers.   

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