- Organization
Our proposed SOC has 16 distinguished members with expertise in all the astronomy education, outreach and heritage areas, preferably with more experience in the area of cultural astronomy, dark sky, and astronomical heritage background. The SOC represents well all over the world and includes both senior and young researchers, where 44 % are women. The LOC is mainly from the organizing institute ESSTI, other stakeholders such as collaborating universities and ministries in the country and 36% of its members are women. We have got 12 support letter that endorse the project proposal and collaborators that show expression to co-host the symposium together with the principal organizer ESSTI.
2. Structure
The presentations will include invited talks, selected contributed talks, and posters. Depending on the COVID-19 and the situation in Ethiopia, the mode of the workshop presentation would be the hybrid format (both physical and virtual).
The schedule will include a poster marathon and poster-viewing sessions. We will also organize at least 2 public talks around the conference, capacity building e training on dark sky preservation and Astro-tourism training for young researchers, tour guides and tour operators as well as awareness creation forum for high level decision makers.
To give more visibility to the recent development of cultural astronomy and scientific activities and space science in Africa, and to motivate collaborations between African and international scientific communities, we will organize lunch-session/s, and provide a small exhibition space.
3. Gender equality and geographical distribution:
Gender equity and geographic distribution is taken into account in this proposal. In such a way that: 50% of the SOC members of this symposium are females and the rest are males. As much as possible, the SOC members were selected from different corners of the world from Africa, Europe, Asia and America. Furthermore, 36 % of the LOC members are females, others are males.
4. Funding
This conference will have local support, including the Ethiopian Space Science and Technology Institute under the Ethiopian Ministry of Innovation Technology and the Ethiopian Tourism Ministry. Besides the fund will be raised by participating potential collaborators and stakeholders
5. Venue
The host institution has previous experience with organizing scientific conferences and meetings (e.g., East-African Astronomical Society meeting and conference in 2017 and virtually in 2021, respectively, IAU-MEARIM 2017 regional conference, IAU ISYA 2017 school, IAU 356 AGN symposia in 2019, African Leadership Congress (ALC) in 2019), the symposium is therefore hosted on high standard venue where it can accommodate more than 200 participants adhering the Covid protocol with full-fledged conference accessories.
Outside of the conference, the city of Addis Ababa will provide excellent opportunities for visiting the United Nations and African Union headquarters and learning more about the current socio-economical, environmental and cultural developments of Ethiopia that can also give perspective for Africa in general.