THE Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East Asean Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA) Socio Cultural and Education (SCE) cluster proposed potential projects for the year 2017 to 2025.
The SCE working groups have created a deliverables including cultural festival, cultural exchange and visits to sites of creative/cultural industries, Asean national attires exhibit, and “Budayaw: BIMP-EAGA Festival”.
To achieve its development goals, Adel Suenith, officer-in-charge Executive Director of National Commission for Culture and Arts said, the BIMP-EAGA is anchored on six strategic pillars: connectivity, food basket, tourism, environment, trade and investment facilitation, and the newly-added socio-cultural and education.
“To foster connectivity among BIMP-EAGA, people cultures and one of the purpose is to foster sense of community among the provinces belonging to EAGA region,” Suenith told Sun.Star Davao in an interview at the sidelines of the BIMP-EAGA Socio-Cultural and Education meeting held at the Waterfront Insular Hotel on Thursday, July 21.
The 20 provinces part of the EAGA region will benefit from the proposed projects.
“This is to promote or enhance culture, education among the member” Charles Raymond Maxey, commissioner of the Philippine Sports Commission said in a separate interview.
The event aimed to strengthen cultural ties among the four countries.
Gaspar Gayona PhD, Tesda-Davao director and overall chairman of BIMP-EAGA clusters said they have created networks to facilitate the exchange of trainers, industry emersion, sharing of technology, partnership with research and exchange students.
“For this year we further to discuss the mechanics of the establishment of networks, Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) network institutions and the network Higher Education institution” Gayona said.
Over 60 representatives from the four countries attended the meeting.
The two-day meeting was divided into two working committees, the Human Resource Development group headed by Malaysia while the socio-cultural development group is led by the Philippines. (JCR)