Today during 217th Session of the UNESCO Executive Board in Paris, Fondazione Santagata for the Economics of Culture received the formal establishment of official relations with UNESCO, the United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture.
Fondazione Santagata is now in official relations with UNESCO for its expertise in heritage economics, creativity and heritage management planning together with 32 other foundations such as the World Wildlife Fund and World Monuments Fund.
This is a greatly important achievement which scales up the already existing cooperation implemented during the last years with UNESCO in different regions of the world and which adds value to our team expertise, know-how and networks.
Fondazione Santagata does in fact operate in promoting and developing research and capacity building programmes both at the national and international scale, focusing on culture and heritage driven economic development.
Our core mission is to support local communities in properly manage their cultural and heritage resources, in order to generate positive socio-economic impact while enabling capacity building, knowledge transfer and cooperative networking.
More in detail, in the recent years, Fondazione Santagata has developed projects and training programmes, working with governmental and non-governmental institutions worldwide, to support UNESCO and its related designated sites and communities to implement the World Heritage Convention, the Convention on the Safeguarding of Immaterial Cultural Heritage, the Creative Cities Network, the MaB Progamme and Global Geopark Networks, investigating, developing and applying tools with specific reference to the economic dimension of sustainable development as it is defined by the United Nations 2030 Agenda.
“We believe that culture and heritage play a fundamental role in generating and boosting economic development of territories and communities and we are at the same time proud and fully committed to support UNESCO in the implementation of its conventions and programmes, in particular in relation with its 1972 Convention concerning the protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage, enhancing its awareness raising, visibility and capacity to impact on UNESCO designated sites and communities – says Alessio Re, General Secretary of Fondazione Santagata.