The UNWTO Silk Road Training and Capacity Building Programme

"The United Nations World Tourism Organization Silk Road Training and Capacity Building Programme", the first edition of a ground-breaking initiative aimed at strengthening connectivity and cooperation along the historic Silk Road routes, recently concluded with great success and with support of UNESCO.

Jointly organized by the Silk Road Programme of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), its UNWTO.Themis Foundation and the University of Valencia, 22 delegates from 12 Silk Road countries completed a highly innovative tourism course consisting of 1-month online courses and a 10-day onsite course in Madrid and Valencia, Spain.

The training focused on achieving a higher level of consistency among Silk Road destinations by favouring joint learning and the practical implementation of key tourism concepts and strategies. While benefitting from the teachings of international tourism experts and enjoying a highly diverse event programme that included technical field-trips and master classes in tourism related fields (gastronomy, community-based tourism, etc.), the participants worked on devising a series of transnational project proposals aimed at enhancing the tourism potential of the historic routes. Resulting from intense group-work sessions and based on common Silk Road needs and interests, an ongoing objective of the training will be to materialize the proposed projects with the help of the Member States and relevant partner institutions.

Alla Peressolova, Head of the UNWTO Silk Road Programme, said she was highly proud of this training ‘as it creates co-operation across borders and is an excellent example of a public/private partnership bearing direct and tangible results. Moreover, as an official activity of the 2017 International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development, the training supports sustainable tourism practices and works towards the objectives contained in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’.

Participants in this new training course came from Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Greece, Egypt, Bulgaria, Russia, Italy and Spain. The second edition is expected to be held in 2018. For more information, please visit the Silk Road training webpage.

The UNWTO Silk Road Training and Capacity Building Programme

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