Ramallah, 23 February 2021, Taawon and The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), signed a Framework Agreement to cooperate on fields of mutual interests in Palestine.
Yara Al-Salem, Director General of Taawon, emphasized “the importance of this agreement with UNESCO, in support of education and culture in Palestine”. She also highlighted Taawon’s “attention to joint work with various local and international institutions as a platform for ideas and initiatives, a promoter for civil society and a strategic partner in community development, which becomes reflected on the economic, social and cultural empowerment of the Palestinian people, empowering their institutions to resume functioning”.
Al-Salem commended the support of UNESCO for several cultural heritage preservation projects that Taawon had implemented in the past, in addition to supporting community awareness activities in this field, expressing hopes that the agreement will contribute to creating projects and partnerships that will benefit Palestinian people, especially in the education and culture sectors.
Noha Bawazir, Head of Office and UNESCO Representative praised the framework agreement with Taawon by stating “UNESCO and Taawon share similar values, and support common objectives within their respective mandates, covering sectors such as culture and education. The agreement will scale up the existing the organizations’ relationships and will be building on their mutual programme priorities”.
Bawazir emphasized the importance of building synergies and the need to capitalize on UNESCO’s competencies and comparative advantage within its mandate as it relates to the agreement. “UNESCO’s added value rests with intergovernmental functions in fields of standard setting, national and institutional capacity building, serving as a laboratory of new ideas and knowledge” Bawazir added. The partnership will be implemented in close coordination with Palestinian National Commission for Education Science and Culture.
Through the signed agreement, UNESCO and Taawon will build on the established organizational cooperation to attain Palestinian needs in the areas of Education and Culture, and closely cooperate to support distance education, higher education, development of education and vocational training programs, and implementation of projects for the preservation and protection of cultural heritage and diversity of cultural expressions. Both organizations aim to jointly perform community outreach and mobilize partners from civil society and the local community for the achievement of their strategic goals and program priorities. Furthermore, both organizations will collaborate to reaffirm the role and visibility of this partnership nationally.