The Iraq Britain Business Council’s Education, Training and Heritage Sector Table continues to flourish. Its most recent meeting, held at the Athenaeum Club in London on Tuesday 28 June, had an attendance of seven member companies, plus several observers. A highlight was a clear and forward-looking presentation by Dr Hassan Al-Alak, Cultural Counsellor at the Embassy of the Republic of Iraq in London, who had only recently taken up his post. Since his brief encompasses education, it was an invaluable meeting which presages close co-operation in the future. Among the initiatives IBBC hopes to achieve as a result of working together is a conference on higher education, to be held in Najaf with participants from both Iraq and the UK.

The meeting heard a report on the progress of the newly established IBBC Women’s Group, which seeks to draw attention to opportunities for women in business in Iraq.  The agenda also allowed discussion of the new mentoring scheme, organised jointly by the IBBC  and the British Universities Iraq Consortium, which allows Iraqi postgraduate students studying in the UK to visit some of our member companies to see good management and financial accountability close up, prior to the students taking up posts in Iraq itself.  This is being piloted at Newcastle University but hopefully will be emulated elsewhere.

The meeting examined ways in which the IBBC can assist in the recruitment of Iraqi students to British universities and reported on forthcoming IBBC events, including a programme of English language teaching at Kingston University specially prepared for the Baghdad Chamber of Commerce.

The next meeting will be on Wednesday 26^th October at 4 p.m. and IBBC hopes that as many members as possible will be able to send representatives.