KOICA evaluated 120 global education and training for three years and six months since 2015
‘YU Ethiopia SNNPR Saemaul Undong local training’ selected as top case
[March 5, 2019]
<Ethiopia SNNPR local Saemaul development training for public employees (Feb 2016)>
YU was selected as the best case for global education and training by KOICA (Korea International Cooperation Agency) for its ‘Ethiopia SNNPR Saemaul Undong policy research’ program conducted in SNNPR (Southern Nations, Nationalities and People’s Region) in Ethiopia in February 2016. KOICA conducted the ‘2018 global education and training excellent performance case contest’ for 120 global education and training programs conducted from March 2015 to August 2018 for three years and six months, and it ranked YU’s Ethiopia SNNPR Saemaul Undong local training program as the best case.
On Feb 27, 2019, the ‘2019 KOICA New Global Education and Training Institute Seminar’ was held at KOICA. At this seminar, YU Professor Choi Wae-chul (Department of Saemaul and International Development) introduced the Saemaul local training case in Ethiopia in 2016 conducted by YU and received the ‘2018 KOICA Best Global Training Project Award’ plaque by KOICA President Lee Mi-gyung. At the time, Professor Choi served as the director of the YU international development cooperation center and was in charge of the Saemaul local training program in Ethiopia.
<Presentation of the best 2018 KOICA global training case>
Meanwhile, KOCIA’s ‘Best Global Training Project Award’ was pursued as part of a project for finding and sharing outstanding cases to improve the level of global education and training projects among ODA projects targeting developing countries by KOICA. KOICA collected cases from 10,004 people who participated in the projects including overseas offices, public agencies, training institutes, trainees, etc. in all of KOICA’s global training and education projects from March 2015 to August 2018 (3 years 6 months) and analyzed and assessed the global training project program’s suitability and effectiveness of its achievements by consigning a professional institute. There was a total of 147 applications in this evaluation and among them, 120 were evaluated. By region, 41 were in Asia-Pacific, 43 in Africa, 15 in Latin America, 6 in the Middle East and CIS regions, and 15 in other regions.
The review criteria of outstanding cases that KOICA announced were performance and content. The performance sector is composed of the suitability of performance (conformity with the KOICA training project goals, conformity with the development demand of beneficiary countries, conformity with international development cooperation standards) and the effectiveness of the achievements (efficiency of the achievement process, impact of achievements, sustainability of achievements). The contents sector is comprised of concreteness (concreteness and reality of the achievement process description, clarity of the achievements and expected effects description) and logic of contents (feasibility and consistency of contents, clarity of proof).
In the YU Ethiopia Southern Nations, Nationalities and People’s Region SNNPR Saemaul Undong education and training, YU prepared the educational program and dispatched faculty to Ethiopia to conduct training in Ethiopia to about 700 local public employees from February 20 to March 1 back in 2016. The public employees who attended the training gave high scores in all objective evaluation indicators such as training achievement, trainee satisfaction and application plans in the follow-up evaluations. The Ethiopia SNNPR is one of the nine provinces of Ethiopia and its population is approximately 19 million.
In particular, the Ethiopia SNNPR recently elected a new governor and requested two in-depth Saemaul development training and education to YU to pursue local social development through Saemaul development. In result, two training sessions are scheduled to be offered from March of 2019. This is another reason why the YU Ethiopia SNNPR Saemaul local training and education was given positive reviews.
It was judged that what the YU Saemaul education program left behind was that despite the poor financial conditions of developing countries, the will of the leader who intends to pursue social development by procuring financial resources for education through independent efforts is an important element for the success of local development, and that despite the fact that the highest leader in the provincial government changed, Saemaul development was judged to be an effective policy for overcoming poverty and to achieve local social development.
Professor Choi Wae-chul (Department of Saemaul and International Development), who is also an advisor for the Ethiopia SNNPR said, “Korea received 12.77 billion dollars in aid from the international community back when it was poor. It is now time to repay the international community that helped Korea overcome its poverty in the past. In particular, Korea transformed from a country that received international aid to a country with a per-capita income of 30,000 USD, and therefore, Korea has the responsibility to share its development experience with the 146 developing countries (beneficiary countries) that still face difficulties.” Professor Choi added, “Such attitude is the way for the people who received financial resources from the international community to be used as the driving force for national development to repay the international community. Furthermore, this will not only open up paths for our future generations in the international community, but will serve as a shortcut to expand the market for industrial products of Korea.”
The Saemaul Undong has been used as a policy plan by the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) since 2011 to overcome poverty in developing countries around the world and in 2013, the Saemaul Undong was registered as a UNESCO Memory of the World. YU has worked continuously on creating the Saemaul Undong an academic science and to share it for the development of developing countries. Meanwhile, YU YU has offered Saemaul international developing sharing education programs for 85 countries as of 2019 and this year, it is scheduled to offer training for high-ranking public officials in SNNPR of Ethiopia and training for Saemaul education teachers of Myanmar and Rwanda. Furthermore, YU is receiving attention as the main university for education and research of global Saemaul studies (Saemaul development studies by providing support and counsel for the installation of the ‘Saemaul Economic Development Department’ at universities in Zambia and Cambodia.
