Event Highlights: KIX EMAP SAMENA Team Retreat

The KIX EMAP Hub hosted its first sub-regional team retreat in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh on 12-13 June 2024. This retreat was attended by KIX EMAP National Coordinators, GPE Focal Points and civil society representatives from the South Asia, Middle East and North Africa (SAMENA) sub-region countries, as well representatives from the KIX EMAP Hub team and GPE KIX team at IDRC. The team retreat aimed to facilitate collaborative discussions around the work in the sub-region, and to plan ahead and strengthen the SAMENA community through peer learning and experience sharing.

Over the two-day retreat, participants reflected on the KIX Maldives and Bangladesh National Uptake Forums, including suggestions for future uptake forums. Country representatives were given the opportunity to share the challenges they are facing in their respective countries and discussed how they are working to overcome them. They also discussed opportunities for collaboration within and across country contexts; this included collaboration between key stakeholder groups, such as academia and government, collaboration between different countries in the sub-region, and collaboration between country teams and the KIX research projects. Finally, the retreat allowed for participants to plan ahead on KIX activities, keeping in mind the complementarity of KIX to the Ministries of Education, as well as the GPE country-supported work in the sub-region.

The country representatives found that the team retreat was useful in learning more about the role national teams can play within their countries and in strengthening their professional connection to the KIX EMAP Hub. The retreat  also allowed them to discover opportunities for collaboration with other SAMENA country representatives that may positively affect their work. Participants left feeling more prepared to move into the next stage of KIX activities in SAMENA countries.