Competence and capacity development
In late 2016, the Danida Fellowship Centre’s support to continuing education was linked to the Strategic Sector Cooperation Facility anchored in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Building on our many years of providing learning opportunities for Danish supported partners, the new DFC Scholarship Programme was born.
A new DFC Scholarship Programme
The Danida Fellowship Centre took several steps in 2017 to ensure that the new DFC Scholarship Programme is relevant, needs based and complementary to the Strategic Sector Cooperation Facility.
We held face-to-face and virtual meetings with the Sector Counsellors from 14 countries to understand the needs of our new partners and the context in which they operate. We discussed the content of the new scholarship programme with Sector Counsellors and focal points from Danish partner authorities during two Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ information seminars, and held individual meetings with many of the Danish partner authorities to discuss the best use of the programme.
We also established a reference group across the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sector Counsellors and Danish partner authorities. The group reviewed the guidelines for the new DFC Scholarship Programme, and the guidelines were finalised in December 2017.
Blanca Aurora Mena Vela
Participant in the Danida Fellowship Centre’s “Cardio-metabolic diseases” course at the University of Copenhagen under the Strategic Sector Cooperation Facility. “
What we offered
Based on our dialogue with the Sector Counsellors, Danish partner authorities and Danish universities, the Danida Fellowship Centre developed and provided scholarships for 10 new thematic courses and 3 cross-thematic courses in 2017. The latter are open to partners from the Strategic Sector Cooperation Facility countries and Danida priority countries.
Well-tested methods from our experience with tailored courses since 1990 were integrated in the new programme during 2017, making it mandatory for all tailored courses to focus on learning by seeing and doing, including action planning – a unique feature of our courses.
We granted 13 scholarships for university summer courses, 4 scholarships for full Master’s degree programmes and negotiated 130 seats for summer courses at the Universities of Aarhus and Copenhagen in 2018.
We continued to invest in eLearning, and we launched two new eCourses on results-based management and action planning in 2017.
We supported 10 tailored competence and capacity development initiatives funded by Danida programmes in 7 countries. These initiatives ranged from specialised courses, workshops and study tours to eLearning.
More than 300 staff of Danida funded partners took part in our short interdisciplinary courses held in Denmark and selected African countries.