9 April 2013, Kabul, Afghanistan - UNITAR recently launched the Call for Applications for the 10th annual cycle of its highly successful Fellowship for Afghanistan Programme. The Fellowship is a seven-month long programme which builds the capacity and enhances the leadership, management, and professional skills of a core group of senior government officials, academics, and practitioners from Afghanistan. Sharing Hiroshima's lessons in post-conflict reconstruction, the Fellowship discusses important themes such as organization development and change, project design and management, and human resource development /management.

The Fellowship utilises unique methodological approaches, including face-to-face and blended learning, web-seminars, self and team-led assignments, and incorporates also international mentors and resource persons. Consisting of four workshops, including one in Abu Dhabi, UAE, and one in Hiroshima, Japan, the Fellowship also sees successful fellows from previous cycles return as coaches for project teams within subsequent cycles, and successful coaches return as Afghan resource persons, who act to contextualise the international training offered to the changing realities in Afghanistan.

Fellowship objectives include:

  • To support an Afghan cadre in the application of their increased knowledge, and confidence in the transformation of their respective ministries and organizations
  • To build a committed and highly capable fellowship community in Afghanistan which can serve as a resource for planning and implementing capacity-building and training activities at the local and national levels

Having trained almost 400 fellows since its inception, the Fellowship counts alumni from all Ministries in Afghanistan, as well as representatives of the private sector, including Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat (DABS), the National Power Utility, and NGOs, including the Aga Khan Foundation. UNITAR enjoys particularly strong relationships with the Ministry of Finance, as well as the Afghan Civil Service Institute (ACSI), and looks forward to implementing another meaningful cycle, with international collaborators which include Microsoft Corporation, the University of Calgary, the Singapore International Foundation, and the University of Texas at Austin.

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