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Lessons
Learned
The
hands-on experience provided to participants in this project strengthen
their ability to engage in development cooperation activities and
also demonstrate that higher education does have an essential role.
In the process, we learned many important lessons about development
cooperation including:
- Development
efforts require flexibility and must allow for change in focus
over time;
- New partners
can and should be brought in as project requirements dictate;
- Development
efforts take time - accomplishments cannot be forced to fit a
predetermined calendar; ·
- Higher education
has a comparative advantage in development efforts that include
training and curriculum development components;
- Inter-institutional
partnerships will benefit from intentional egalitarian cooperation,
including shared administrative oversight, budgetary management,
and decision making;
- Participation
in development assistance activities will stimulate faculty to
seek additional international experiences;
- Mature motivated
students can make significant contribution to development cooperation
activities;
- Modest resources
can be significantly leveraged to expand development activities;
- Interpersonal
"chemistry" affects success in development efforts - some partnerships
work better than others;
- Some development
efforts will fail.
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