Mission to Bonn!

Finally, I made it to Bonn to the DAAD headquarters for the second Development-related Postgraduate Course for Young Professionals“(German acronym: AST = Aufbaustudiengänge) meeting. The scheme was established in 1987, currently having over 42 courses offered by different universities in Germany and will be celebrating its 25^th anniversary in 2012. The aim of the first meeting held last year was to better interlink between the 42 different courses and form an active network for a more active exchange of ideas, experiences and a better access to existing subject-related Alumni networks.The second meeting was aimed at furthering the concepts and ideas that the first network meeting had come up with such as strengthening the linkage between the courses by both virtual and face-to-face activities, the vehicle for the virtual interaction was established as a starting point with the Alumniportal Deutschland, an online platform for the AST-Network.

The second network meeting also had representatives from all the courses under the scheme represented and the whole idea was to further the face-to-face interaction and come up with ideas that would be relevant for the 25^th anniversary this could be through workshops or conferences with themes that reflect the development related concept. The meeting was officially opened by Anke Stahl, the Head of section of the scheme who gave a brief summary of last years meeting and challenged us to pick up on where the last participants left and come up with practical and meaningful results that could be pursued in the year and climax at the anniversary celebration. After a brief introduction of the 40 participants, the challenge for the day was how to divide the participants into working groups based on the recurring themes that came up during the round of introduction based on the courses profiles. After much deliberations and several attempts with different ideas the participants finally agreed to divide the groups in to the following core areas, climate change, health, resource management, food security and peace and conflict al discussed under the theme of sustainable development.

with some of the participants

The second day was mainly limited for the various group discussions and presentations on the group’s ideas. The idea behind this was to come up with relevant activities that could be pursued, the courses that would be ideal to participate in such an activity and who would lead the whole process for easier coordination and communication. The results from all the groups were quiet good and by the end of the presentations it was clear that all the participants had put in lots of effort to ensure that the meeting was a success. However, the real work begins with the implementation of the concepts as in the previous year the participants came up with great ideas but the commitment by the participants was not good. The DAAD is committed to ensure that this year the ideas will be pursued and with the selection of the various coordinators its is hope that all the grassroots work with begin but the starting point would be to join and actively participate in the alumni portal part, interesting was the proposal by the food security working group to establish a online workshop where participants would be able to discuss issues that relate to food security. Until then,we can only hope that this is a starting pint for the journey that lies ahead!