UNESCO launches call to identify and share good socio-emotional learning practices in schools across Latin America and the Caribbean

The UNESCO Regional Office in Santiago, through the Latin American Laboratory for the Assessment of the Quality of Education (LLECE), launched a regional call to gather and give visibility to initiatives that promote socio-emotional learning in primary education. The invitation is aimed at educational communities in Latin America and the Caribbean that have developed concrete experiences to strengthen skills such as empathy, self-regulation, collaboration, coexistence and responsible decision-making.

UNESCO has launched this call because socio-emotional learning is a key dimension of a comprehensive and quality education, and forms part of the Organization's efforts to contribute to more inclusive, equitable education systems centred on the well-being of children and adolescents. In this regard, UNESCO's LLECE Laboratory has incorporated these skills into its regional ERCE study and has developed various tools to support their teaching in the classroom.

The initiative seeks to recognize good practices that are already transforming school life and to broaden their reach, so that they may inspire and be adapted in other educational contexts. Teachers, school leaders and local education authorities from the 18 countries that are part of the Laboratory and that participate in ERCE 2025 may apply: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, the state of Nuevo León in Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela. The submitted experiences must have been implemented in officially recognized educational institutions, have at least one school year of development, include a driving team of at least two members of the school community, and offer elements that make them replicable.

Applications may include experiences involving the explicit teaching of socio-emotional skills, initiatives integrated into curriculum subjects, extracurricular or complementary activities, as well as actions linked to coexistence, citizenship, equity, diversity or sustainability in the overall school experience. The call also includes proposals aimed at work with students, teachers, school leadership teams, families or the school community as a whole.

Experiences may be submitted between 28 May and 30 September 2026. Based on the initiatives received, UNESCO will produce a regional inventory and select 12 initiatives that will be transformed into replicable socio-emotional learning activities, which will later be disseminated through a guide and a web platform.