2018-11-22
On the afternoon of November 16, 2018, the Inaugural Meeting & 2018 Annual Meeting of the "Belt and Road" International Science Education Coordinating Committee was held in Beijing and attended by the officials and representatives of 19 organizations from home and abroad, including Children & Youth Science Center, ECO Science Foundation, UNICEF, The Network of African Science Academies, the Czech Association of Scientific and Technical Societies, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of Pakistan and so on.
Upholding the principle of achieving shared growth through discussion and collaboration, participants discussed the operating guidelines of and the operational mechanism and future work plan for the "Belt and Road" International Science Education Coordinating Committee. Upon consultation, all participants unanimously approved and announced the establishment of the "Belt and Road" International Science Education Coordinating Committee, and elected Prof. Wu Yueliang, Vice President of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Academician of CAS, as the President of the First Committee and the following persons as the Vice Presidents: Mr. Liu Yang, Director General of CAST Children & Youth Science Center; Dato Lee Yee Cheong, Chair of the IAP SEP Global Council; Prof. Manzoor Hussain Soomro, President of ECO Science Foundation (ECOSF); and Mr. Oksen Lisovyi, Director of the Minor Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
The Secretariat of the Committee will be located at Children & Youth Science Center of CAST, with Mr. Liu Yang acting concurrently as the Secretary General. 18 organizations from home and abroad joined the Committee as its first member organizations, including Tunisian Association for Future of Science and Technology, Azerbaijan Ministry of Education, Academy of Sciences Malaysia, National Science Museum Thailand, National Organization for Development of Gifted Talents and Young Scholars of Iran, LAZSTA (Met South West Science Teachers Association) of Australia and so on.
The "Belt and Road" International Science Education Coordinating Committee was initiated by Children & Youth Science Center of CAST under the framework of the "Belt and Road Initiative" in an effort to implement the spirit of the World Conference on Science Literacy held in September this year and to actively respond to the call of the "Beijing Declaration" released by the same conference. This initiative has received active responses from the counterparts in countries along the "Belt and Road". As a multilateral coordinating mechanism, the Committee consists of three working panels focusing on teenager science education events, science instructor development and science education resources respectively, with an aim to promote resource sharing, information exchange and talent exchange among countries and to build a long-acting platform contributing to the science education exchanges and cooperation between China and countries along the route of Belt and Road.
After the meeting, all member of the Committee jointly released the "Belt and Road Science Education Cooperation Initiative", which calls on all sectors of society to work together to carry out pragmatic cooperation in the field of science education with various forms and rich contents, to promote the development of science education and cultural exchanges and cooperation along the "Belt and Road", and to promote the building of a community with shared future for mankind.
Article contributed by CAST Children & Youth Science Center