EIGHTEEN staffers of the University of Guyana (UG) last Friday, received certificates after participation in a capacity building programme, at the Education Lecture Theater of UG’s Turkeyen Campus. Giving a summary of the project, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of UG, Dr. Marlene Cox, said that the professional development programme titled “Capacity Building for the Financial Sustainability of ACP Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)”, is intended to build the capacity of HEIs to act as an engine of sustainable development through training staff in resource mobilisation and equipping them with the skills to generate well directed proposals.
Cox said that the programme consisted of five modules namely; “Research mobilisation in African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) countries: diversifying income streams to generate greater self reliance”, “Fundraising and resource mobilisation in higher education”, “Commercialisation of research”, “Business development in a university context” and “Grantmanship in higher education: securing external funding for research”.
She explained that the development and delivery of the programme is the objective of a collaborative project that is led by Mona and Cave Hill Campuses of the University of the West Indies (UWI) St. Augustine Campus, with partners from the Universities of Belize, Guyana, Mauritius, South Pacific and Warwick, Anton de Kom University of Suriname, the University of Technology in Jamaica. Selected members of each institution underwent a “train the trainers” programme and afterwards delivered the programme to the staff of their institutions by a combination of face to face teaching and e-learning.
Cox said that the project was developed in response to the 2008 open call for proposals from the ACP- EU Cooperation Programme in Higher Education (EDULINK), which was formally launched in May 2009 and ends this month. She said that the programme which will be available on the internet will be offered continuously, after this first offering.
The beneficiaries of the programme were from both the Turkeyen and Tain Campuses of UG, and were from different Faculties and Departments.