Ashraf AboArafe
The Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) through its Regional Hub in Cairo kicked off today the implementation of a comprehensive Technical Assistance (TA) Project for the Women Development Organization (WDO).The project comes as a component of the Strategic Partnership Plan between the WDO and the IsDB which started one year ago. The kickoff meeting discussed the technical and implementation plan for the upcoming project which will start by the beginning of 2022 for a period of 18 months.
The project will contribute to strengthening the institutional capacity of WDO during its inception phase in order to play its key role in advancing and promoting the status of gender equality and the empowerment of women in OIC member states. The project also will boost the development of a number of strategic frameworks of the WDO including its First Four-Year Strategy (2022-2026) and its First Two Year Action Plan (2022-2024). Four thematic products will be also developed through this project including a flagship report for WDO.
This project comes as a manifestation of the long-standing cooperation between the different entities of the system of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). It is also a clear example for the implementation of different OIC resolutions which call for sister organizations and entities within OIC system to support each other and launch joint programs for the benefit of all people in OIC countries.
It is worth mentioning that the IsDB is a multilateral development finance institution, established in 1957, that is focused on Islamic finance located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. There are 57 shareholding member states with the largest single shareholder being Saudi Arabia. WDO is the newly established specialized agency of OIC for gender equality and the empowerment of women with its HQs in Cairo, Egypt.
