National Commission of People’s Republic of China for UNESCO (Chinese National Commission for UNESCO) organized an “online exchange meeting to promote cooperation with UNESCO in the fight against COVID-19” through video conferencing on April 30, 2020. It was attended by Qin Changwei, Secretary-General, Zhou Jiagui, Deputy Secretary-General and Cui Ying, Deputy Secretary-General, of Chinese National Commission for UNESCO, as well as 50 representatives from UNESCO’s Chinese partners, including Twinning universities, chairs, category 2 institutes and centres, creative cities (such as Nanjing and Yangzhou) and internet companies (such as Alibaba and Huawei). Du Yue, Director of Division for Cooperation and Partnership, Sector of PAX (Priority Africa and External Relations), UNESCO, delivered a speech through video. Liu Chang, Director of Division of International Cooperation of International Knowledge Centre for Engineering Sciences and Technology (referred to as the “IKCEST”), attended the meeting and made a briefing on IKCEST’s work as an invited speaker. Staff from the IKCEST Secretariat also attended the meeting.

In her speech, Liu Chang detailed IKCEST’s efforts to fight against COVID-19 worldwide as a series of related work had been carried out from February to April, and expressed the Centre’s willingness to strengthen cooperation with various partners. Details of its main anti-pandemic work are as follows:

1. IKCEST organized its various expert teams to contribute in their own ways, who then jointly came up with a new column on its platform dedicated to COVID-19 prevention and control.  The number of user visits and clicks on the column continues to increase, covering 176 countries in the world. The introduction video has been posted on UNESCO’s official website and YouTube channel to provide anti-pandemic knowledge services to users in the Member States. The representative of UNESCO Beijing Office, Ms. Marielza Oliveira, praised IKCEST’s work in one of her letters.

2. IKCEST actively responded to UNESCO’s proposal, compiled information and link lists of online courses (nearly 1800 courses) and quality video resources, and shared with the headquarters to provide high-quality educational resources for users worldwide.

3. IKCEST actively responded to the appeal of Philippe Pypaert, a Programme Specialist for Natural Sciences, UNESCO Beijing Office, and organized experts to conduct relevant research whose findings then got into an article entitled “Use of Technologies in the Fight against COVID-19”. Mr. Philippe is trying to publish the article on UNESCO’s official website.