On February 29, the UNESCO Chair "Higher Technical Education, Applied Systems Analysis and Informatics" of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with the Ukrainian Peace Council, the National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine, the National Center "Minor Academy of Sciences of Ukraine" and eleven UNESCO Chairs operating in Ukrainian universities.
The signing ceremony took place at the National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine. The participants discussed areas of cooperation both in person and online. Unfortunately, not all fourteen UNESCO Chairs were able to join the agreement, as two of them had worked before the war at universities that remained in the temporarily occupied territories.
This Memorandum, as Mykhailo Zgurovsky, chairman of the Ukrainian Peace Council and head of the UNESCO Chair at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, emphasized during the discussion of areas of cooperation, serves to expand the environment of institutions operating under very similar basic statutory principles. "We started organizing certain joint events earlier, worked together in different formats, and the experience of this interaction showed that it is advisable to formalize it. This is necessary in order to use this environment to more actively promote the basic principles on which the activities of our organizations are based, and, most importantly, the Ukrainian Peace Formula."
Therefore, the areas of cooperation identified in the Memorandum include the promotion by its participants of efforts to establish a just peace and security through measures consistent with their statutory activities and programs, as well as through similar measures to be carried out in cooperation with specialized agencies and humanitarian organizations of the UN system (including UNESCO, WHO, FAO, UNICEF, WFP); popularization of Ukraine's image in the international arena in its struggle for its sovereignty, inviolability of borders and fundamental principles of democracy; dissemination of balanced and objective information about the aggression of the Russian Federation against the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian state using the potential of civil society and free, independent channels of public dialogue; implementation of joint promising research, projects and programs at the national, regional and global levels aimed at intensifying peacebuilding processes in Ukraine through the development of education, science, culture, communication and information; knowledge transfer and knowledge exchange through the search, creation and implementation of opportunities to involve higher education students in various forms of familiarization with the experience and activities of the national UNESCO Chairs and the Ukrainian Peace Council (in particular its youth wing); promoting the establishment, expansion and strengthening of partnerships through the possible involvement of partners in the organization and conduct of visits, national, regional and international seminars, round tables, conferences, symposia, business/role-playing games, exhibitions and fairs.