COOPERATION IN ACTION

OAS-SEDI: Forging New Partnerships for Development

August 2015, Washington DC
Education Authorities launch Cooperation Platform. The 34 Ministries of Education of OAS Member States now have a mechanism for ongoing cooperation and learning. The new "Virtual Platform for Education Cooperation in the Americas" responds to the interest expressed by the education authorities in their most recent Ministerial Meeting (February 2015, Panama City) to have a tool that would facilitate the exchange of solutions in the area of education and enable progress in the construction of the Inter-American Education Agenda, a process that also began in February and that is being led directly by the Ministries. The new virtual platform was launched in August at OAS headquarters by the Ministry of Education of Panama, current Chair of the Inter-American Committee on Education (CIE) and developed in collaboration with the Organization.

August 25, 2015, Washington DC
ProMexico and the OAS Join Forces to Promote Competitiveness in the Americas. Once again, the government of Mexico finds the OAS to be an ideal partner to promote competitiveness, innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems in the Americas. The new cooperation agreement signed between ProMexico and the OAS states that the institutions will join efforts to convene, organize and monitor initiatives and partnership opportunities among countries in the context of the Inter-American Competitiveness Network (RIAC). Mexico has a long history of collaboration with the OAS on development and is an active participant in the activities of the RIAC. One example is that in 2016, it will host the X Competitiveness Forum of the Americas and be the Network’s Chair Pro Tempore.

June 10, 2015, Washington DC
Development Cooperation Fund program implementation begins. 21 member states will benefit from resources from the OAS Development Cooperation Fund (DCF) since the approval of its new structure and a more robust system of managing for results. In this program cycle, member states submitted a range of ground-breaking programs under the theme “Social Development and the Creation of Productive Employment,” including the creation of a Financial Empowerment Center for low-income households in Antigua & Barbuda; the establishment of a GIS system to locate people with disabilities in Honduras; skills training for the insertion of 1,000 youth into the labor market in the Dominican Republic, and the development of a bamboo processing plant providing access to new opportunities for employment in Jamaica, among many other programs that will begin this month and run until July 2017. Moreover, for the first time in the history of the DCF, additional partners have been identified to complement its programs, with a strong commitment of counterpart funding from member states.