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Training - Our Scholarship Programmes
Our Scholarship Programmes – Initial and Inservice Training for Adult Educators from Developing Countries (A+F)
Contact person at dvv international Bonn:
Eva König
E-Mail: koenig@dvv-international.de
A+F is a transversal programme of professional training for adult education staff in the “Third World”, thereby providing specific specialist support for the country and regional projects of dvv international. Initial and inservice training for adult educators, both to support projects and for more general purposes, contributes to human resources development in a number of development sectors. It may be seen against the background of current international development goals such as “Education for All”, the UN “Millennium Development Goals” or the “Action Programme 2015” of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation.
In recent years (up until 2005), the A+F programme has consisted largely of the award of bursaries for the training of adult educators at academic institutions in Africa, and so-called special programmes, i.e. small-scale projects to support individual partners in various African and Asian countries. These have been complemented by the development and procurement of teaching and learning materials, the provision of necessary equipment and materials for individual partners, and professional exchange.
Aside from the wide-ranging evaluation of the bursary programme in Africa in 1996/97, most of the suggestions for improvement contained in which have already been implemented, continual discussion with partners, project visits and a number of meetings of dvv international project leaders have led to recommendations for revision of the A+F programme. At the end of 2004, the dvv international commissioned six research reports on English-speaking and French-speaking Africa, Central, South and South East Asia, and Asia and the South Pacific. These were intended to produce an overview of initial and inservice training for adult educators at academic and non-university training establishments, on which recommendations would be based for the future. The results were presented at a conference in Cape Town (South Africa) in 2005, where they were discussed by some 50 high-ranking African and Asian delegates. All of this led to a redesign of the programme to make it more coherent in content and more effective in terms of staff training, institutions and AE programmes, while expanding its geographical coverage. The associated increase in professional exchange between education and training institutions was intended to achieve synergy effects.
Now that the previous special programmes have been removed from A+F and integrated into the African/Asian country or regional programmes, the measures covered by the A+F programme cover the following areas, which are interlinked and are intended to complement and strengthen one another as a homogeneous whole:
a) Initial and inservice training courses
b) Professional exchange and networking
c) Bursaries
d) Development and production of teaching and learning materials
e) Research and evaluation
f) Improving the physical infrastructure of partner institutions
The target groups for A+F activities are people in developing countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and – in exceptional cases – countries in transition in Europe and the Caucasus who work or would like to work in teaching, administration or management in state and non-governmental adult education institutions and need initial or inservice training. They include a wide spectrum of multipliers and senior staff ranging from advisers (extension workers), NGO managers and grassroots project workers, to ministerial officials and university lecturers.
We work in partnership with African, Asian-Pacific and Latin American initial and inservice training institutions in the academic and non-university field, both governmental and non-governmental. Particular importance is given to high-quality “centres of excellence” with a regional impact.