The NGO Education Partnership (NEP) is organizing the joint thematic working group meeting with its members around 144 members organizations working in education this morning to promote inclusive and high-quality education and lifelong learning opportunities.

The Joint Thematic Working Group Meeting, scheduled for 22 December 2023, aims to strengthen the capacity of NEP members at local and national levels in addressing challenges related to education, including inclusive education for children with disabilities, out-of-school children, and ethnic minority children. The meeting also aims to produce advocacy agendas and enhance policy dialogue mechanisms.

The expected outcomes of the meeting include an improvement in members’ knowledge and understanding of inclusive and gender concepts. Each thematic working group is expected to analyze major emerging issues in their respective sub-sectors, identify root causes, and develop advocacy plans to address these issues.

The agenda for the meeting includes welcome remarks, plenary sessions on disability inclusion and transformative gender responsiveness in education, and group discussions on identifying root causes, developing advocacy strategies, and mechanisms of each thematic working group. It also includes presentations of each group’s advocacy agenda and a feedback session.

The meeting will involve group discussions facilitated by NEP’s Executive Committee members, with participants divided into smaller groups based on thematic working groups. These groups will identify key gaps and challenges, and discuss evidence-based information, stakeholders, policy support, actionable plans, and advocacy methods. Each group will then present their advocacy agenda, followed by a feedback session and a discussion on the NEP’s Policy Bank and data collection mechanisms.

In summary, the meeting aims to enhance the capacity of NEP members, develop advocacy agendas, strengthen policy dialogue, and improve data collection mechanisms to support the organization’s vision of inclusive and high-quality education for all in Cambodia.