The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — a branch of the UN, with its head office in Paris. Its job is to help countries with education, science and culture, and it puts special effort into places that need the help most: teacher training, school building, protecting languages, sharing scientific research. Most people, though, meet the name in one context only: World Heritage. UNESCO keeps the list of World Heritage Sites — places judged so valuable to all of humanity that the world should protect them together. That is why you constantly see "a UNESCO World Heritage Site" on travel signs and in tourist articles, and why in everyday talk UNESCO has almost come to mean "the group that decides which old places are important". That is not really what it is, but that is how the name lives now. It is said as a word, not spelled out — you-NESS-ko — and it takes no "the" in front when used as a name: "UNESCO said", not "the UNESCO said".