February 2010


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UWI hosts EDULINK Train the Trainers Workshop global graduation

“Jean Monnet, one of the founding fathers of the EU today used to say that building Europe is not about putting different states together. It is about putting peoples together. This is precisely what EDULINK is doing,” said Stelios Christopoulous, Charge d’Affaires, Delegation of the European Union to Trinidad and Tobago.

Mr. Christopoulous was one of the main speakers at the EDULINK “Train the Trainers Workshop,” graduation ceremony and luncheon, which recently took place at The UWI, St. Augustine Campus.

On Thursday January 21st, 2010, participants from The UWI’s seven partner universities in the South Pacific, Mauritius, Belize, Guyana, Suriname, Jamaica and Warwick, as well as from the other UWI campuses, Mona, Jamaica and Cave Hill, Barbados, gathered at The UWI Faculty of Social Sciences Lounge to celebrate their completion of the EDULINK “Train the Trainers Workshop.”

This workshop provided the trainers with a professional development programme in resource mobilisation, which would enable them to contribute to the creation of a critical mass of knowledge and the development of a network of Higher Education Institution (HEI) staff trained in revenue generation. Among the training modules presented were Resource Mobilisation in African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Countries, Fundraising and Resource Mobilisation in Higher Education, Commercialisation of Research and its Contribution to the Knowledge Economy, Business Development in a University Context, and Grantsmanship in Higher Education.

The UWI St. Augustine Campus Principal Clement Sankat, also a main speaker at the event, expressed his pride in the University’s role in this initiative, the outcome of which he stated, would be to “enhance and strengthen our research capacity, allow for more effective teaching, encourage the use of technology and intensify the management of intellectual property.” Principal Sankat went on to say that, when participants returned to their respective countries and institutions at the end of the workshop, the next phase would be for them each to train ten academic and administrative staff members “in resource mobilisation and to produce one proposal each, for donor support.”

This workshop was a part of an EDULINK funded project, titled “Capacity Building for the Financial Sustainability of ACP HEIs,” led by The UWI, in collaboration with other HEIs in the ACP Group of States.

EDULINK is an initiative that funds cooperative projects between ACP HEIs and the 15 EU member States that are signatories to the 9th European Fund (EDF).