August 13, 1999 Volume II,
Issue 4
In this issue...
• ALO released a special solicitation for an Early Childhood Development project in El Salvador (see story below).•
The Association
Liaison Office for University Cooperation in Development's (ALO) Request
for Proposals for Institutional Partnerships and Workforce Development Partnerships
closed April 21 and May 14 respectively. Both included one major change
from last year's rounds of competition-the inclusion of a Mission response
form.
Proposers sent the form to the relevant USAID Mission with a summary of the intended partnership. Missions could indicate whether the proposed project fit with their objectives.
Panels of independent peer reviewers then judged fit with Mission priorities, along with other criteria, including promise of sustainability, design and likelihood of high impact development results, and evaluation and public outreach.
Both the Institutional Partnerships program and Workforce Development Partnerships program (with the American Association of Community Colleges-AACC) are funded through a cooperative agreement between ALO and USAID's Center for Human Capacity Development. Missions also have funded proposals submitted to ALO, such as a project in Eritrea with Virginia State University. Additionally, missions have contributed to already funded projects in order to increase their scope, as in the University of Florida's project in Nicaragua. USAID's Bureau for Africa also has provided funds for selected partnerships.
Although ALO and AACC received fewer proposals for FY99 funding, reviewers for both programs agreed that, after a strong field in the inaugural year, an even greater proportion of proposals were of high caliber and met the criteria for funding this year. Awardees will be announced in late August.
ALO's programs aim to support partnerships linking the technical and human capacity-building strengths of colleges and universities here and abroad to achieve strategic objectives of USAID. For more information on higher education partnerships, see the ALO Web site at http://www.aascu.org/alo.•
Dr.
Melissa Clarke, M.D., of Howard University performs a procedure in an Internet
training video for South African emergency rooms. Howard was one of five higher
education institutions presenting at the ALO Roundtable.
USAID has endorsed a special objective to encourage the widespread application of information technology and Internet use. U.S. higher education has been actively developing, applying, and broadening its use of the Internet, both domestically and internationally, to enlarge student bases, provide greater learning opportunities, promote collaborative research, and extend services to communities.
To bring the needs of USAID and the expertise of higher education closer together, ALO held a Policy Roundtable on June 15, 1999, on "Higher Education Uses of Information Technologies for Development."
Using cutting-edge demonstrations of case examples from six higher education institutions, participants assessed the burgeoning potential and remarkable cost-effectiveness of these types of applications. They also made recommendations for tapping U.S. college and university experiences with the Internet to encourage and strengthen education, research, and professional networking by users in developing countries. USAID is well positioned to play a key role in brokering this kind of knowledge exchange.
The report from the roundtable will be available later this summer. Send requests for copies to alo@aascu.org.•
Higher education partnerships will be among the core activities of the Education Development and Democracy Initiative (EDDI) activities, according to Dr. Carolyn Coleman of the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) Bureau for Africa and Manager of the initiative.
Designed to improve the quality of and technology for African education to assist with Africa's integration into the world community of free-market democracies, EDDI is an outcome of President William Clinton's March 1998 visit to Africa. The inter-governmental initiative involves the Department of State, USAID, U.S. Information Agency, and the Peace Corps, and several other departments playing supporting roles.
EDDI focuses chiefly on Botswana, Ghana, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Uganda, and Mali, but will also include institutions in other countries in the region. Experts agree that an important component of development success is the level of education or human resource development. The challenge is to make higher education more relevant, primary systems more efficient and equitable, and skills training more widely available.
ALO and USAID Africa have discussed involving higher education in the future through support for relevant ALO Institutional Partnerships.•
In
March and April, USAID/El Salvador staff engaged in talks with the Association
Liaison Office for University Cooperation in Development (ALO), for assistance
in finding a U.S. institution to assist in the Mission's Early Childhood
Family Education Activity (EDIFAM).
Representatives from ALO, G/HCD, and USAID/El Salvador developed a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a higher education partnership to support the Mission's early childhood development project for three years at a funding level of up to $1.1 million. ALO released the RFP on May 21 with a deadline of July 20.
The Mission chose the Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas" (UCA) to be the lead institution in El Salvador. In addition to a full-time, in-country specialist, the partnership will result in a degree and other training programs, research/evaluation studies, curriculum development, consolidation of experimental early childhood education program experiences, and preschool education via UCA radio.
G/HCD's Gary Bittner called the exercise a "good prototype for work with other missions." Although the deadline has past, the RFP is available in PDF format, viewable by Adobe Acrobat Reader, on the ALO Web site at http://www.aascu.org/alo/elsalvador.pdf. Mission staff may contact ALO at (202) 478-4700 or Gary Bittner at (202) 712-1556 to discuss possible similar collaborations.•
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Shares
of New Foreign Plants among Southeastern States, 1990-1994.
"We cast our lot with involvement in the world," said North Carolina Governor James B. Hunt at the Governor's Global Forum held on May 21, 1999, at the University of North Carolina (UNC). The conference stressed the importance of increased globalization of the state's business, government and education sectors to meet the challenges of the 21st Century.
Keynote speaker John Clancy, President of Sea-Land Services, a worldwide shipping company based in Charlotte, noted that in the coming decades, nine of the 15 biggest economies will be in today's developing or emerging countries.
According to the state's Department of Commerce, North Carolina is consistently ranked as the preferred U.S. site in the Southeast for foreign-held businesses. In 1998, there were 230,000 North Carolinians employed by foreign firms. The State Secretary of Commerce Rick Carlisle said that the outstanding university and community college systems were key to this success. For example, the 59 institutions of the North Carolina Community College System serve local and foreign-based industries with a comprehensive array of customized training and development services.
Another example of higher education involvement was a recent visit facilitated by the UNC Center for International Understanding to the Research Triangle Park area for ten people from Liaoning Province in China. The delegation represented the Liaoning Association for Science and Technology and related organizations and studied environmental protection and technological development during their stay.
UNC maintains the North Carolina Global Gateway (NCGG) at http://www.ncgg.org/, which serves both the citizens of North Carolina and visitors from the Global Community. The site offers more information on what is happening in international affairs in North Carolina, covering global activities in all dimensions: businesses, cultural and educational organizations, ethnic and religious groups, and other international projects and programs.•
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The Knowledge Exchange and Learning Partnerships (KELP) program is "networking networks" to increase the leadership role of African post-secondary institutions.
KELP is a USAID Bureau for Africa, Office of Sustainable Development (AFR/SD) inter-sectoral Education for Development and Democracy Initiative (EDDI-see story above).
One objective of the program is to catalyze major improvements in African post-secondary institutions through the integration of modern information, communication, and knowledge (ICK) technologies into research, teaching, and learning processes. Another objective is to increase the flow of knowledge and experience between field activities and centers of learning both in Africa and the U.S. in strategic objective relevant areas.
KELP works with partner institutions who are willing to participate in sharing ideas, committing time and resources, making decisions, and taking action to bring about a desired development objective: increasing the leadership role of post-secondary institutions in sustainable development in Africa. Partners include the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, and the Africa America Institute.
The team plans to meet in Washington, DC in mid-September. For more information on KELP, see the Web site at http://www.kelp.org.•
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The
world's longest canopy walkway, a program of the Amazon
Center for Environmental Education and Research, transports ALO
partners up 120 feet into a treetop world in Peru. Bolivian student Alicia
de la Cruz, Organization for Tropical Studies Director Nora Bynum, Panamanian
student Yaxelis Mendoza, and Peruvian Nelly Llerena gather on the walkway.
Peru has a large forest area and a rich diversity of habitats, but uncontrolled urbanization and pollution threaten these natural resources, according to USAID in its 1999 Congressional Presentation.
In order to help protect the natural resources of Peru, through an Institutional Partnership grant from ALO under a cooperative agreement with USAID, a new program is working to develop the Amazon region's scientific infrastructure. The program, a combined effort of the 56 member institutions of the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS), the Amazon Center for Environmental Education and Research (ACEER), the National University of the Peruvian Amazon (UNAP), and affiliated institutions, will offer three years of training centered on the ecology of the Amazon for 70-100 graduate students and natural resources managers from Peru and Hispanic South America.
The highly successful inaugural version of the OTS/ACEER/UNAP training program, Ecología de Ecosistemas Amazónicos took place in May and June of this year, with 22 students and professionals selected from a pool of 105 applicants. The course ran with two participants from partner UNAP, three from other institutions in Peru, ten from other Amazonian countries, two from Puerto Rico and five from other Latin American countries. During the four weeks of the course, students worked in contrasting flooded and dry land ecosystems using time-tested OTS models of group and independent research projects. At the end of the course, participants had the opportunity to apply for modest post-course support to conduct independent research at sites across the Amazon region, and/or to participate in a practical course in the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in natural resource management offered by partner ACEER.
Thirteen students chose to participate in the GIS course, while nineteen participants applied for and received post-course research awards. OTS and its partners are currently seeking funds to bring together post-course research awardees from this year in a symposium with next year's course participants in Peru.
The implementation of the summer courses in Amazonian ecosystems and Geographic Information Systems will contribute to the preparation of a pool of biologists and natural resource managers better trained to evaluate and manage the region's ecosystems. Overall, the program will promote participation among South American natural resource managers in the international community of ecologists as represented in the OTS consortium. Outputs will include training and field research by South American ecologists and natural resource managers; introduction of a highly effective field course methodology that stresses hands-on research experience; research support for young scientists; increased capability in GIS use; knowledge of the ecology of the western Amazonian region; and development of a stronger research and education infrastructure in Hispanic South America.
The ALO grant of $100,000 is complemented by $217,816 from OTS and $221,330 from ACEER. The total estimated investment in this institutional partnership is $539,146. Watch for new developments on this story and others on the ALO Web site, http://www.aascu.org/alo •
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Established in 1992, ALO coordinates the efforts of the nation's six major higher education associations to build their partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and to help their member institutions plan and implement development programs with colleges and universities abroad. Copyright 1999 by the Association Liaison Office. All rights reserved. Use of this publication in full or partial form is encouraged, but requires the permission of the publisher. Send comments, requests for addition to list, questions, and ideas for stories to ALO.
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