An easy-to-use manual is available to help educators and community leaders reorient education for sustainable development. The goal is to give "people knowledge and skills for lifelong learning to help them find new solutions to their environmental, economic, and social issues." The Education for Sustainable Development Toolkit by McKeown, Hopkins and Rizzi, is envisioned to help schools and communities develop a process for creating locally relevant and culturally appropriate education. The design of the ESD Toolkit is based on the idea that communities and educational systems need to dovetail their sustainability efforts to achieve and reinforce local sustainability goals.

The toolkit has eight major components including introduction to sustainability, description, and discussion of major issues, case study, management techniques for initiating change into schools, public participation methods for including citizens in community decision making around sustainability, exercises, and links to other websites.

The Toolkit, cited in a recent statement by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, was first published in 2000 in both hard copy and on the World Wide Web. The Toolkit was revised in 2002 after being translated into 10 languages.