New UNESCO-Pepsi Partnership

UNESCO recently announced their intention to sign an agreement with Pepsi that will create a partnership designed to promote vocational training for young people in Burma.

 

Our Ambassador to UNESCO David Killion released a statement praising this vitally important partnership between UNESCO and a major U.S. Corporation, which you can see here.

  

UNESCO Joins Hands With Ford Motor Company To Drive Awareness Of Conservation And Environmental Grants

Source: Middle East Events

Entries Now Open For 2011 Ford Grants Offering Funding For Local Environmental Groups. A Total Of US$100,000 Available For Grass Roots Green Initiatives In GCC And Levant. US$1.1million Granted To 130+ Local Environmental Initiatives Across The GCC And Levant Countries Since 2000.

Read more!

The UNESCO-HP Brain Gain Initiative

The migration of highly-skilled people is having a significant impact on higher education and research in developing nations, as universities and research centers have to retain highly-skilled and increasingly mobile professionals in increasingly competitive labour markets.

UNESCO and HP joined forces in 2003 to develop several projects, using innovative technology to create a “brain gain” for regions that are particularly impacted by the exodus of academics and scientists.

In 2009 UNESCO and HP agreed to scale up the initiative to help create a sustainable university e-infrastructure for science, bringing together higher education institutions and research centres in Africa and the Arab States region and allowing them to pursue innovative education projects.

By the end of 2011, this infrastructure could span some 100 higher education institutions in 20 countries provided like-minded corporations and organizations join UNESCO and HP in this initiative.

Click here to learn more!

UNESCO fights brain drain with computing gain

The Brain Gain initiative is a digital infrastructure linking African and Arab Region universities to global knowledge

The migration of highly-skilled people is having a significant impact on higher education and research, as universities and research centres have to adjust to increasingly mobile, competitive labour markets, and strive to retain highly-skilled professionals.

In an effort to change this trend, UNESCO and HP joined forces in 2003 to develop several projects, using innovative technology to create a “brain gain” for regions that are particularly impacted by the exodus of academics and scientists.

Many skilled expatriates, wherever they may be located, have the potential and the willingness to contribute to the development of their home country, and information and distributed computing technologies provide a new way to enable distance cooperation.

A digitally literate generation of young people will be able to take advantage of the opportunities provided by access to virtual classrooms and virtual laboratories. Remote access to rare or expensive resources can help small, low-budget universities enjoy access to infrastructure of the same quality as large, well-endowed ones.

In 2009 UNESCO and HP agreed to scale up the initiative to help create a sustainable university e-infrastructure for science, bringing together higher education institutions and research centres in Africa and the Arab States region and allowing them to pursue innovative education projects.

Read:

• More of the UNESCO webpage describing the project
• An article on SciDev.Net describing the projet

USAID, UNESCP and Intel Foundation Partnership

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), UNESCO and the Intel Foundation have created a joint project to promote digital inclusion in Brazil. The project will provide courses on "Technology and the Community" and "Technology and in Work" in some 180 community education centers.

Read the announcement from UNESCO Brazil (in Portuguese)!

Microsoft Commits $50 Million in Higher Education Resources, Training and Certifications

Gates & Matsuura at 2004 signing

In an effort to help higher education institutions support economic stimulus efforts and work-force development strategies, Microsoft Corp. has committed up to $50 million through the Microsoft Education Alliance Program agreement. As part of the agreement, the company will provide resources and tools for short-term work-force training and higher education enhancements.

The announcement was made at the Education Leaders Forum, a one-day forum jointly organized by UNESCO and Microsoft, where more than 150 ministers of education, senior education officials and policy advisors discussed how governments and universities can take full advantage of e-technology's potential to address the current knowledge and skills challenges facing higher education.

Earlier this week, Microsoft and UNESCO announced a joint task force to help higher education institutions worldwide meet the growing challenge of supporting economic stimulus efforts and work-force development strategies. The UNESCO-Microsoft Task Force on Higher Education and ICT will develop a strategic plan of action to identify how ICT can be used by governments as a catalyst for change. Microsoft's $50 million commitment is supporting the mission of the new task force and enabling the implementation of critical UNESCO and Microsoft educational resources.

Read more!

UNESCO and Sun Microsystems Announce Joint Education and Community Development Effort Powered by Open Technologies

In an effort to support social and economic development, UNESCO and Sun Microsystems signed a Collaboration Agreement last week at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum 09. At the signing ceremony, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information, Abdul Waheed Khan, and Executive Vice President and Chairman, Europe, APAC and Emerging Markets for Sun Microsystems, Crawford Beveridge, outlined details of the initiative. The agreement recognizes open source technologies as key to increase access to information, communications technologies and ICT skills training in under-served communities throughout the world.

Read more!

Sun & UNESCO Partner to Promote Open Source

The agreement includes the use and promotion of Centers of Excellence for Adoption of Open Technologies. As part of these, Sun staff will provide expertise and training materials for the open technologies "stack", while UNESCO will focus on promoting adoption of open technologies and will work to identify institutions that would become partners for providing support and training on these technologies: the partners will be putting at the service of these communities a full range of open and free technologies that provide them with the ability to shape the ICT landscape, enabling transformation and modernization efforts.

The words of Mr. Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO are encouraging.

“UNESCO values the possibilities offered by all software models and advocates a diversity of choice to ensure that all can benefit from information and knowledge. We are glad to work with Sun to harness the power of free and open source software for extending and disseminating knowledge and to foster community approaches to software development”

Landmark UNESCO-Professional Team Partnership

FCBarcelona is one of Europe's great professional soccer teams. Now its associated Foundation, the FCBarcelona Foundation, has signed a landmark agreement with UNESCO by which they will partner in four areas:

• The fight against racism and violence in sport
• The fight against doping
• Education and literacy teaching for defenseless children
• The creation of a UNESCO Chair FCBarcelona on "Sports and Civic Responsibility"

Read more!

USTTI Course Catelog Is Now Out

Normally this blog focuses on information more directly relevant to UNESCO. We make an exception in announcing the new catalog for USTTI, because it provides such a great opportunity for people in developing nation National Commissions for UNESCO who are interested in communications and information. USTTI offers an affordable opportunity for people from developing countries to develop knowledge and skills about information and communications technologies though study in the United States.

Check out the Catelog!

The United States Telecommunications Training Institute is a non-profit public-private partnership between senior federal officials and leaders of the U.S. information and communication technology (ICT) and broadcast industries. The goal of this collaborative effort is to share the United States' technological and managerial advances with women and men who regulate and maintain the IT and communications infrastructures throughout the developing world.

I was involved in a formal evaluation of USTTI many years ago, and was greatly impressed by its programs, and the positive perception that they had in the minds not only of their sponsors and teachers, but also their graduates.

In 2008, USTTI will offer 83 courses. Each of these courses is described in this 2008 course catalog. The catalog also includes information about how to apply, and funding. Since the courses are offered without tuition to developing country participants, and since in some cases funding for travel and living expenses in the United States is available, the courses are often quite affordable.

A group of Indian Ocean emergency communications students from the U.S. Telecommunications Training Institute (USTTI) during a visit to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. They visited the Center other NOAA facilities in the Pacific and Alaska Regions to learn how the United States conducts tsunami preparedness and mitigation. UNESCO of course is sponsoring the development of tsunami warning systems through it Intergovernmental Oceanographic Program. Source: NOAA NWS Focus

UNESCO and HP Sign Strategic Partnership Agreement

UNESCO and Hewlett-Packard (HP) signed a strategic partnership agreement on 19 December to strengthen their collaboration around existing education projects. The signing ceremony, held at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris, was attended by Koïchiro Matsuura, UNESCO Director-General and Gabriele Zedlmayer, vice president, Global Citizenship HP Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Through the partnership, UNESCO and HP will work together on several projects in the area of education, especially to support UNESCO’s priority of “Education for All". This includes an evaluation on the extension of the existing brain drain project to additional regions in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. UNESCO and HP started to collaborate five years ago in South East Europe to help key universities connect to global research networks. In 2006 the project was extended to Africa. The project fights brain drain by providing universities with an advanced technology called grid computing, which allows top quality researchers to play a key role in international research and contribute to economic development in their home countries.

Another project is the World Heritage Map, which enables the general public to visualize the spread of World Heritage sites around the globe, and raises the awareness of the World Heritage Convention. The map is above all an educational tool, allowing UNESCO to communicate its work in this field on a large scale.

In addition HP has provided a financial contribution to UNESCO for the “Printing and distribution of the Man and the Biosphere Map”. The Man and the Biosphere Map will be fully prepared and edited by the Division of Ecological and Earth Sciences of UNESCO, which will provide the full lay-out to HP for printing and distribution.

The Computer recycling training guide is also the fruit of UNESCO and HP cooperation: it aims to support local stakeholders, in developing countries in particular, to manage electronic waste. The goal is to support local actors, especially those with a background in managing used computer equipment, and to create environmentally clean and healthy business opportunities. HP is the only technology partner in the project, which also includes the French Agency for Environment and Energy Management (Agence de l'Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l'Energie - ADEME), EMMAUS, the international movement of solidarity, and TIC ETHIC, Information and Communication Technologies in the service of ethics and sustainable development.

UNESCO and Non-Governmental Organizations

Since its foundation, UNESCO has given great importance to partnership with civil society organizations, in particular NGOs. The role of civil society representatives is increasingly important in every sector of daily life, and partnership with civil society organizations is becoming indispensable for governmental organizations in pursuing their strategic objectives.

Every six years, UNESCO's secretariat makes a report to the General Conference on the contributions that NGO's have made to UNESCO's operations. A new report has recently been published in preparation for this year's meeting of the General Conference.

Download the report (PDF, 46 pages.)

UNESCO provides this list of NGO's maintaining official relations with UNESCO that are headquartered in the United States:

	FORMAL CONSULTATIVE RELATIONS
	INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR EDUCATIONAL ASSESSMENT (IAEA)
	WORLD CONFERENCE OF RELIGIONS FOR PEACE (WCRP)
	WORLD JEWISH CONGRESS (WJC)
	FORMAL CONSULTATIVE RELATIONS AS A NETWORK
	INTER-AMERICAN PRESS ASSOCIATION (IAPA)
	INTERNATIONAL READING ASSOCIATION (IRA)
	SIL INTERNATIONAL (SIL)
	SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER (SWC)
	WORLD PRESS FREEDOM COMMITTEE (WPFC)
	OPERATIONAL RELATIONS
	B'NAI B'RITH
	INTERNATIONAL ADVERTISING ASSOCIATION (IAA)
	INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR CONTINUING ENGINEERING EDUCATION (IACEE)
	INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR COUNSELLING (IAC)
	INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF LIONS CLUBS
	INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL FOR HEALTH, PHYSICAL EDUCATION, RECREATION, SPORT AND DANCE (ICHPER)
	INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON EDUCATION FOR TEACHING (ICET)
	INTERNATIONAL LITERACY INSTITUTE (ILI)
	INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY ASSOCIATION (ISPA)
	INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR EDUCATION THROUGH ART (INSEA)
	JUNIOR CHAMBER INTERNATIONAL (JCI)
	ROTARY INTERNATIONAL
	ZONTA INTERNATIONAL (ZONTA)
	OFFICIAL RELATIONS THROUGH UMBRELLA ORGANIZATION
	INTERNATIONAL UNION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE (IUPsyS)
	WORLD FEDERATION FOR MENTAL HEALTH (WFMH)
	FOUNDATION AND SIMILAR INSTITUTION
	POPULATION REFERENCE BUREAU, INC
	WORLD EDUCATION
	WORLD MONUMENTS FUND (WMF)

UNESCO and infoDev conclude Memorandum of Understanding for future cooperation

Read about the new partnership and its particular emphasis on providing education planners, policy-makers and practitioners with resources for the use of ICTs in education.

UNESCO and infoDev have signed a Memorandum of Understanding that lays the ground for future cooperation, particularly in in the areas of education and communication.

The Memorandum foresees that UNESCO and infoDev will share ideas, resources, and expertise to launch joint projects and improve the impact of their action.

In terms of the agreement, particular emphasis will be placed on providing education planners, policy-makers and practitioners with resources for the use of information and communication technologies in education.

infoDev is a partnership of international development agencies, coordinated and served by an Secretariat housed at the World Bank. Thus its offices are in Washington D.C. While there have been close informal relationships between the U.S. government and infoDev and U.S. citizens in the Secretariat, and while the U.S. is a member nation of the World Bank, the U.S. government has not been a donor to infoDev.

UNESCO and Hewlett-Packard launch project to counter brain drain in Africa

Read the full UNESCO Press Release.

UNESCO and Hewlett-Packard have launched a joint project to help reduce brain drain in Africa by providing grid computing technology to universities in Algeria, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Zimbabwe.

The “Piloting Solutions for Reversing Brain Drain into Brain Gain for Africa” project aims to establish links between researchers who have stayed in their countries and those that have left, connecting scientists to international colleagues, research networks and potential funding organizations. Faculties and students at beneficiary universities will also be able to work on major collaborative research projects with other institutions around the world.