PRESS RELEASE

Ghana Appointed To Unwto St-Ep Foundation Board Of Directors

Ghana, represented by the Minister of Tourism, Hon. Akua Sena Dansua (MP), has been appointed a member of the Board of Directors of the prestigious UNWTO ST-EP Foundation.

The appointment took place at the nineteenth session of the UNWTO General Assembly held in Gyeongju in the Republic of South Korea from 9th-14th October, 2011.

A letter addressed to Hon. Sena Dansua and signed by the UNWTO Secretary General, Taleb Rifai, dated November 17, 2011 confirmed the appointment, and looked forward to Ghana’s active participation on the new Board.
ST-EP, an acronym for “Sustainable Tourism Eliminating Poverty” is a project created to harness the developmental power of Tourism in the fight against global poverty. Its origins and goals are closely tied to the UN Millennium Development Goals, which includes halving extreme poverty and hunger by the year 2015. The ST-EP is especially focused on people living on less than a dollar a day, and is targeted mainly at the world’s least developed countries, especially those from Africa.
ST-EP grew out of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg and in 2005 the UNWTO's General Assembly in Dakar unanimously approved the ST-EP Foundation's Constitution, including the establishment of the eight-member Board of Directors, as well as the choice of Seoul as its headquarters.
The ST-EP Board is an important governing board in the UNWTO, which provides valuable guidance and supervision to the development of the ST-EP Initiative. In the past years, the support of the ST-EP Board has been instrumental in launching of 100 ST-EP projects worldwide, planning and undertaking research activities, and organizing awareness-raising and capacity building seminars on tourism and poverty reduction.
The ST-EP Foundation has brought the Thank You Small Library initiative to support people living in the least developed parts of the world. The TYSL model is based on the Korean experience of development through education.
The Thank You Small Library (TYSL) initiative is in underprivileged communities where children do not have access to reading and studying facilities and to provide them with both educational and entertainment opportunities through reading. Ghana has benefited from Twenty-four (24) of the Thank You Small Libraries (TYSL) project since October 2007.
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BOAKYE-BOATENG PRINCE
DIRECTOR, PUBLIC RELATIONS
MINISTRY OF TOURISM
020-8071161 (princebb1@gmail.com)