The future of World Heritage depends largely on the decisions and behaviour of young people. UNESCO would like to integrate "World Heritage education" into the classroom in order to draw young people's attention to the need to protect the World Heritage Site through educational programmes and to show them how they can participate in its conservation. Young people see the World Heritage Convention as a commitment to international understanding and intercultural dialogue. Working with the World Heritage Site is also remembrance work on the history of man and the history of nature. Conservation and the preoccupation with "yesterday" serve to better understand the "today" for: a world of tomorrow.

German UNESCO Commission and the Federal Coordination of World Heritage of UNESCO Project Schools

Together with the 16 state coordination offices, the Federal Coordination Office links the project schools throughout Germany with each other, provides new impulses on UNESCO topics, initiates new projects and promotes the participation of the schools in the international UNESCO network.

In 1994, the "World Heritage for Young People" project was launched in Paris by the UNESCO project schools and the UNESCO worldwide network:

One of the aims of this project is to ensure that pupils

• learn more about the cultural and natural heritage sites inscribed on the World Heritage List because they are of particular importance to humanity
• learn how they can contribute to the conservation of these sites, which are under the protection of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention
• develop new perspectives and dedicate themselves in the long term to the protection of local and national heritage and World Heritage sites in order to preserve them for present and future generations;
• The aim is also to use a multidisciplinary approach to familiarise pupils with the tasks of heritage conservation, both at school and - in cooperation with museums and experts in nature and heritage conservation - at the sites themselves.