UNITAR Renews Longstanding Partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
8-13 February 2018, New York, USA – To successfully launch this year’s partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, UNITAR delivered a four-day training workshop on Public Speaking and Media Relations for 14 Saudi Diplomats from the Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the United Nations in New York. This longstanding collaboration, which has existed since 2005, will see UNITAR deliver 26 training workshops this year on different topics including but not limited to: Public Diplomacy, Climate Change Diplomacy, Business Diplomacy and Leadership Skills. These training workshops will take place in a variety of locations including: Geneva, London, Brussels, Moscow, New York and The Hague, among others.
The first two days of the workshop in New York focused primarily on improving participants communication and public speaking skills. The training expert, Mr. Jérôme L’host, provided techniques and strategies that participants could apply to communicate clearly in order to articulate their government’s position in a cogent and coherent manner. The following two days were dedicated to strengthening participants' ability to interact with various media actors. For this part of the workshop, Ms. Allison Shapira and Mr. Moncef Bouhafa – both communication experts – focused on identifying how journalists operate and what they want, with the ultimate aim of being better able to prepare for media interviews and respond convincingly to difficult questions.
In providing feedback on the content of the workshops, participants were extremely positive, with 88% stating that they would recommend the course to a colleague and a further 100% responding that they were satisfied with the overall content of the workshop. The next workshop to take place as part of the partnership is a course on Leadership and the European Union in Brussels.
Photos: Participants and lecturers of the workshop