BRTE · Building Resilience through Education

Building Resilience through Education

BRTE brings together partners from academia, the private sector and the non-governmental organization sector to find innovative ways to strengthen the resilience of communities affected by recurring disasters. It sees a new role for academia in the whole aid paradigm. Wolaita, a rural zone in southern Ethiopia, is exposed to climatic induced vulnerabilities with increasing frequencies. This new paradigm needs to go beyond mere absorption of or adaptation measures to meet immediate life-saving assistance while working towards ensuring Sustainable Development Goals. The BRTE partnership identified education as a key influencer to bring about this transformative change. The hypothesis is that local intelligentsia in Wolaita Sodo University can partner peers in Europe, the private sector (in Ethiopia and Europe) and the non-governmental organization to accelerate change and bring about socio-economic transformation. The aim of BRTE is to build the capacity of Wolaita’s educational institution in pursuit of the following objectives: • To build the requisite critical infrastructure to enable resilience education and research; • To establish an educational platform that will build human capital and transform livelihoods; • To develop research and innovation capacity that will radically promote social and economic well-being. Despite these challenges early evaluations of the project suggest that WSU has significantly enhanced it critical infrastructure evidenced by: the automated registry system that can cater for over 30,000 students compared to 18,000 at the start of the BRTE project; the improved library system in the main campus and the Otona campus; the ICT system and the ongoing plans to turn WSU into technologically led university; the modularised system and the increased opportunities to progress to post graduate education; and the university environment is greener and more student friendly that tackles issue of sexual discrimination on other racial threats. WSU is now an applied scientific university and its education and research is very much aligned with plans for the socio-economic transformation of society based on commercial agriculture and food production. The ongoing plans for a model university farm to guide and steer agricultural development is just one of the outcomes of BRTE that will shape this future. All indicators suggest that the BRTE will result in 13 PhDs.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз