IAAI and Partners AlNajat & APCD at Academic Council on the UN System Annual Meeting in Rome and at UN Office in Vienna

IAAI has started in early 2018 talks with AlNajat Charity Organization, from Kuwait and Association la Plume pour la Culture et le Développement from Chad towards joint projects and programs for SDGs implementation in Sub-Saharan Africa in the context of the GloCha multistakeholder partnership.

AlNajat is one of the oldest and biggest charity organizations in Kuwait, with a very strong modernization and internationalization strategy which manifests e.g. in the fact that AlNajat frames his programming and reporting along sustainable development goals (for more details see AlNajat Sustainability Reports 2016 and 2017)

APCD is AlNajat’s program implementation partner in Chad with a focus on projects in the fields of Education (SDG4), Water (SDG6) and Health (SDG3).

IAAI is now partnering with AlNajat and APCD in a joint effort to help building bridges between the youth in AlNajat international development assistance target countries and global resources (knowledge, technology, funding) in the context of United Nations goals and programs with GloCha innovations. The objective of this cooperation is to create jointly and in partnership with relevant UN organizations and programs the enabling ecosystem – the institutional and technological infrastructure – for meaningful and rewarding engagement of the broader society and especially the youth in implementation of Agenda2030 sustainable development goals. 

With a joint IAAI – AlNajat – APCD panel on “International and Domestic Resource Mobilization for Knowledge Based Sustainable Development in Sub-Saharan Africa” at this year’s Annual Meeting of the Academic Council on the United Nations System https://acuns.org/am18-program/ we aimed to present our cooperation plans and to get critical feed-back and advice from the acaemic community to improve our concepts and plans.

Miroslav Polzer from IAAI used the opportunity of attending the ACUNS AM18 for expressing our gratitute for the wonderful cooperation with the outgoing ACUNS executive secretary Alistair Edgar and his team over the last decade and welcoming the new ACUNS executive director professor Math Noortmann  from Conventry University (UK).

Dr. AlWandah and dr. Sidiki had first conversations with prof. Noortmann regarding potential cooperation on an ACUNS Workshop in Kuwait in the runup to next year’s ACUNS AM which will focus on SDGs Implementation in Africa. With such an activity AlNajat aims to position itself as a bridgebuilder and gate opener for (young) academics from Africa and Middle east, connecting them with academic communities and UN practitioners in our common pursuit of sustainable development in which nobody is being left behind. 

Before travelling to Rome, IAAI, AlNajat and APCD paid also a visit to UN Office in Vienna where we have had meetings with Mr. Billy Batware (UNODC civil society outreach team) to learn about the work of UN Office for Drugs and Crime in the field of civil society engagement in crime prevention, prevention of violent extremism, drug abuse and in the promotion of a culture of lawfulnes and with Matteo Landi and Sara Landström from UNIDO’s productive work for youth department and (Chief of UNIDO Regional Division for Africa) and Edmé Koffi (Chief of the UNIDO Regional division for Africa) to identify high social impact investment opportunities for AlNajat in sub-Saharan Africa in cooperation with UNIDO in the context of Agenda2030 and GloCha.  

dr. Miroslav Polzer, dr. Dairou Sidiki, dr. Jaber AlWandah

with Billy Batware (UNODC Civil Society Team)

with UNIDO Productive work for youth team, Matteo Landi and Sara Landström