Social affairs minister Vong Soth and UN resident coordinator Pauline Tamesis at the signing ceremony on Wednesday. SOCIAL AFFAIRS MINISTRY
The Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation and the UN resident coordinator’s office in Cambodia expanded their strategic partnership on the “Cambodia Futures Lab”, a project aimed at helping leaders and stakeholders find support to help with solving various problems.
The agreement to expand cooperation in this area was made on November 24 between social affairs minister Vong Soth and UN in Cambodia resident coordinator Pauline Tamesis.
According to the UN press release, the Cambodia Futures Lab aims to strengthen leadership, strategic foresight and systems-thinking capabilities in leaders across all sectors of the Kingdom.
It also will create opportunities for cross-sector collaboration and experimentation among leaders in government, the private sector and civil society during the post-Covid-19 pandemic recovery.
“The Cambodia Futures Lab is a six-month process whereby leaders from government, civil society and the private sector along with UN agencies embark on a collective leadership and learning journey on systems transformation in the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic in Cambodia,” the statement said.
The Cambodia Futures Lab will offer these leaders a platform to define what type of systems transformation can be applied to the Kingdom using innovation and strategic foresight into the Covid-19 recovery efforts in order to accelerate progress on the 2030 agenda.
The joint platform enables engagement with national stakeholders to shape inclusive and sustainable futures for Cambodia, it said.
According to the UN, the Cambodia Futures Lab is jointly organised by the social affairs ministry and UN in Cambodia along with the Ministry of Civil Service and the Royal School of Administration.
It also has the participation of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Khmer Enterprise, Ministry of Commerce, National Council on Social Protection and in partnership with the Presencing Institute and the United in Diversity Foundation.
Chhour Sopanha, director of the social affairs ministry’s social welfare department, told The Post on November 25 that this programme, which will begin on December 6, is a dialogue platform to help officials find support on various issues as well as to build out a system that solves problems to facilitate development and improve governance.
“The main focus is that we want to determine what the root causes of problems are in order to find the best mechanism or solution for dealing with them in order to improve government responsiveness to the needs of the people,” he said.
