Mayor Nestor L. Alvarez attends the ASEAN Regional Roundtable on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) "Promotion and Achievement of MDG through Education and Outreach" last March 24-25 in Asian Institute of Technology, Pathumthani, Thailand.

The two-day ASEAN Regional Roundtable brought together over 100 representatives from civil society including policy experts, opinion makers, as well as representatives of the United Nations, international organizations, non-governmental organizations and academia.

Mayor Alvarez serves as the focal person of the League of Cities of the Philippines on MDGs.

Participants to the roundtable generate strategies aiming at improving and expanding capacity of institutions and professionals to cope with the MDG challenges. This conference also aims to help implement the MDGs in South East Asia, in time for 2015.

An ASEAN Regional Center of Excellence was also created which gained the full support of the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.

Moreover, Prof. Said Irandoust, AIT President, stressed that the Regional Centre of Excellence would support and nurture partnerships among ASEAN government, non-governmental organizations and academic and training institutions at the national levels; and would support national and local Centers of Excellence on MDGs, based in other South-East Asian countries.

Being a Resource City on MDG in the Philippines, Science City of Muņoz Mayor Nestor L. Alvarez together with the other participants, committed to launch local center of excellence in the city to further strengthen the campaign on promoting and implementing the 8 Millennium Development Goals.

The keynote address was delivered by Dr. Surin Pitsuwan, ASEAN Secretary General. Among the other speakers in the regional roundtable were Mr. Ravi Ratnayake, Director of Poverty and Development Division of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP); Dr. Anish Kumar Roy,Director, Bureau for Resources Development, ASEAN: and Dr. Gothom Arya, Chairman, National Economic and Social Advisory Council, Thailand.

The event was hosted by UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), the NGO Section of the UN Department of Social and Economic Affairs (UNDESA) and the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT).