The participants during the ROTA Partners Advocacy Conference.
DOHA: The three-day ROTA Partners Advocacy Conference, which aims to achieve sustainable education for children, opened yesterday at the Students Center of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU).
Aligning to its mission to extend assistance into Asia, Education Above All (EAA) Foundation’s programme, Reach Out to Asia (ROTA), organised this conference.
Reflecting on ROTA’s mission, the Partners Advocacy Conference is an opportunity to promote sustainable education through intellectual debates which will help in creating practical and academic discussions, exchanging ideas, and achieving a unified advocacy path with international partners towards sustainable education for children.
In order to reach out to as many regions as possible, ROTA has been trying with many renowned organisations.
Essa Al Mannai, Executive Director of ROTA Programme, said during the conference: “The world is getting younger and expectations for human rights respect and dignity are rising. Technology and globalisation made societies more connected than ever, but intolerance and conflict remain widespread. Prospects for sustainable equitable and inclusive development are vast, but challenges are sharp and complex.”
“The world is changing – education adapt itself and must also change. That’s the core objective of hosting this summit and we are sure that ROTA Partners Advocacy Conference would be able to bring to life the burning issues that the society is facing and would derive at workable solutions that can be attained by getting together,” added Essa.
During the first day of the conference, partners shed light on subjects such as the global advocacy landscape on education and the need to achieve the goals of sustainable development.
Juliette Touma, Unicef Regional Office Representative, said: “We have worked at Unicef for many years with a number of Qatari active institutions, including Education Above All Foundation. The aim of this partnership is to jointly reduce the number of out-of-school children and ensure they receive quality education.
“A remarkable change was made at this level -taking the efforts exerted to support the Syrian refugee children into consideration - however much more work is still waiting, and we hope our partnership with Education Above All Foundation and the rest of the partners will lead to further progress.”
Dr Khuloud Al Khatib, Representative of the Geneva Institute for Human Rights, said: “Today’s meeting is of great importance as it sets a common roadmap for sustainable education among all concerned parties.”
“When talking about education, we mean planting the roots for building strong bridges for our societies as the collapse of any nation is caused by the absence of education.”
This conference intends to walk with partners on the road of transformative education by focusing on a consultative, participatory approach to more strategically identify, anchor and jointly plan to provide access to quality education.
