GRÓ GEST joins 6th Meeting of the Informal Network of European National Commissions for UNESCO

Today GRÓ GEST joined the 6th Meeting of the Informal Network of European National Commissions for UNESCO at Hotel Reykjavík Natura for a special session on gender equality. Here academic coordinator for GEST programme Dr Thomas Brorsen Smidt and GEST fellows from the 2022 cohort Ms. Sandani Abeywardena and Ms. Lahya Shikongo gave a presentation on the work and activities of the GEST programme and its beginning and future collaborations with UNESCO. Ms. Abeywardena is an Attorney-at-Law at the Chambers of Justice Shiranee Tilakawardane in Sri Lanka. She spoke about the curriculum content of the GEST programme and how it has influenced her work, and she re-called her own personal experience as with learning from a diverse cohort of other fellows and instructors during her five months in Iceland. Ms. Lahya Shikongo is the Chief Foreign Relations Officer at the Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation in Namibia. She introduced the national commission representatives to the structure of the Final Applied project in the GEST programme and presented her own research from the GEST Programme on Namibian women in security and Peacekeeping.

GRÓ became a category 2 centre under the auspices of UNESCO in 2020 and today’s meeting was part of an ongoing conversation about the mutual synergies between the two organizations and the opportunities for future collaboration.