Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development


The Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development is an educational research institute based in New Delhi. It was established by UNESCO in cooperation with the Government of India in November 2012.
It aims to mobilise the world’s youth to put into practice in their own communities the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals and achieving the Sustainable Development Goal) 4.7 towards education to foster peaceful and sustainable societies. On International Youth Day, 12 August 2019 it is starting a campaign called #VirtualGandhiMarchForKindness. It conducted a survey into the effect of peace education in 2016, followed up by an online dialogue on preventing violent extremism which engaged about five million young people on Facebook and Twitter.
The director is Anantha Duraiappah.
It works in collaboration with the United Nations University.
It is developing an ‘intelligent global hub for digital pedagogies’ at Bheemunipatnam where 50 acres of land have been allocated. In July 2019 funding of 660 million rupees from the state government was announced.
It organised the first-ever World Youth Conference for Kindness at Vigyan Bhavan in August 2019 on the theme of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam: Gandhi for the Contemporary World: Celebrating the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi'. There were 60 international delegates from 27 countries. #VirtualGandhiMarch, a social media campaign to mobilise youth to share their kindness stories was launched at the conference. Within a fortnight it had generated more than 3,000 stories from over 50 countries.
It is sponsoring the Tech 2019 conference in India, with the government of Andhra Pradesh that will address how to use digital technologies like video games to build more peaceful and sustainable societies.