The Space Awareness High Level Workshop, organized by the International Astronomical Union’s Office of Astronomy for Development (IAU OAD), European Union Space Awareness project, Ethiopian Space Science and Technology Institute (ESSTI) and the Ethiopian Regional Office of Astronomy for Development will take place on the 7th of October in Addis Ababa. His Excellency Dr.-Ing. Getahun Mekuria, the Ethiopian Minister of Science and Technology will address a gathering of officials, dignitaries, education experts and teachers from Africa and Europe.

The workshop will bring together stakeholders for an engaged dialogue on using space topics for education and outreach in African countries in order to attract young people to science and technology. Discussions will build on the work of the European Union funded Space Awareness project that uses the excitement of space and astronomy to stimulate interest of the youth in science and technology and to kindle a spirit of global citizenship. The discussions will be preceded by a teachers’ workshop in the morning where local teachers will have the opportunity to explore best practices and innovative uses of astronomy and space sciences for education.

The event is held during the World Space Week (4-10 October 2017), the largest public space event on Earth that celebrates the contributions of space science and technology to the betterment of the human condition. The event is registered as a WSW2017 activity.

Space Awareness has developed hundreds of space-related teaching resources and activities in addition to training teachers. The use of such resources and actions have the potential to play a role in achieving the goals of building indigenous human capacity for high technology projects in Africa. Space and Astronomy outreach to the general public is also an effective medium to promote and communicate African involvement and investment in huge science projects such as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), the African VLBI Network (AVN), the work of the Ethiopian Space Science and Technology Institute (ESSTI) and others that drive research and technology development on the continent.

More information and the programme is available here http://www.astro4dev.org/blog/2017/09/25/space-awareness-workhop/

The event is funded through the Space Awareness project which received funding from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Programme under grant agreement nº 638653