UNESCO, the educational, cultural, and scientific organisation of the United Nations, has members from all over the world. With the establishment of the UNESCO Chair for Interdisciplinary Anticipation and Global-Local Transformation at Eurac Research's Center for Advanced Studies - held by Roland Benedikter - South Tyrol now has an even closer connection to UNESCO. The Center for Advanced Studies team recently visited the Futures Literacy and Foresight Programme team, led by Christine Pfeiffer, at UNESCO headquarters to exchange views on current challenges and opportunities for cooperation. Futures Literacy is considered a key competence in the 21st century. In the face of multiple crises, fostering imagination and developing images of the future that inspire hope and enable cooperation is essential. To anchor UNESCO's goals in science and education, more than 900 chairs are working together worldwide. Twenty of them deal with different aspects of future education and foster a direct relationship to the people. This includes organising workshops and lectures, training those responsible in the education sector, or advising local decision-makers - goals the UNESCO Chair has also set in South Tyrol.

The Strategic Foresight Unit of the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, takes a similar approach. The Strategic Foresight Unit closely works with governments and organisations all over the world. The aim is to identify possible future developments, analyse global megatrends, and draw scenarios to prepare decision-makers for unexpected events and enable them to respond appropriately. A whole morning was dedicated to taking a closer look at the activities of the Strategic Foresight Unit at the OECD headquarters located in the Château de la Muette. Eurac Research's Center for Advanced Studies was the first research institution to visit the OECD Foresight Unit.