“In an age where many nations are turning inward, it’s more important than ever to reach across borders and build a better world. It’s with this mission in mind that a growing number of influential CEOs and post-secondary leaders are re-envisioning their goals to embrace the world’s most pressing challenges.”
Read more of this article featured in Academica’s Today’s Top Ten in Higher Ed on September 5, 2018.
“‘Our country is facing a challenge, and we think your school can help.’
This was the substance of what Fanshawe College President Peter Devlin heard in April of 2015, when he was invited by then-Governor General David Johnston to meet the visiting then-president of Peru, Ollanta Humala. Devlin, a retired Canadian Army commander, soon learned that Peru was facing a dual shortage of skilled production technicians in its economy and personnel in its military, the latter shortage stemming largely from the country’s decision to end conscription in 2010.”
Read more of this article featured in Academica’s Today’s Top Ten in Higher Ed on October 24, 2018.
“For many, offering on-campus tutoring services to students in Canada falls under a different category of support than sending these same students around the world to support partners in developing countries. But for Jamie Arron and countless students across Canada, these activities fall under a single mission…. ‘We believe, at their core, universities are about advancing education,’ says Arron. ‘While this of course means supporting students right on campus, we also believe it comes with a responsibility to work more broadly towards greater global equity in education. To be truly global citizens, we cannot just focus on recruitment of international students, but must also support the development of strong local educational institutions in partner countries.'”
Read more of this article featured in Academica’s Today’s Top Ten in Higher Ed on October 17, 2018.
Many Canadians are familiar with the essential work that colleges and institutes do in providing vocational training to support the demands of the labour market, but fewer might know about how these same schools are changing lives around the world through international partnerships. Over the past 40 years, Canada’s colleges and institutes have engaged in over 700 international projects to build a better world for all.
Read more of this article featured in Academica’s Today’s Top Ten in Higher Ed on September 18, 2018.
“Mention the word “internationalization” to Canadian higher ed professionals and many will immediately think of international student recruitment. Others might think of the benefits that having more international students on campus can provide to campus culture and diversity, while others still might think about the need to create more study abroad opportunities for domestic Canadian students. Working in tandem with these significant aspects of internationalization, though, are the global collaborations that Canada’s forward-thinking institutions are engaging in with partners around the world.”
Read more of this article featured in Academica’s Today’s Top Ten in Higher Ed on September 13, 2018.
“A farmer in his late forties winces as he pulls off his shoe, exposing the black and red colouring of a diabetic foot ulcer. The affliction has been plaguing him for months. He’s been to see a specialist several times, but to no avail. Instead of improving, the ulcer has only worsened.
It’s a situation Dr. Krystle Fraser-Barclay encounters often in her work at a clinic based in the urban centre of Georgetown, Guyana. Located along the northeastern coast of South America, Guyana is one of only three counties in the Americas that until 2015 did not offer any training for family medicine professionals. Primary care was delivered through a clinic-based system in which patients rarely met with the same doctor, and rarely for more than one health issue. A new mother, for example, would need one appointment for her postnatal care, another for her baby, another for other related sexual health testing, and so on. By comparison, more than 90% of primary health care delivered in Canada is done through family doctors.”
Read more of this article featured in Academica’s Today’s Top Ten in Higher Ed on July 26, 2018.
“Public health is a lynchpin of Canadian society, impacting the lives of countless community members on a daily basis. But in many parts of the developing world, a public health system of this calibre remains an aspiration. Fortunately, there are dedicated individuals based in many of these countries who are determined to turn this aspiration into a reality.
One such individual is Professor Francis Zotor, who works at the University of Health & Allied Sciences (UHAS) in the Volta Region of Ghana and has been deeply involved in the creation of a School for Public Health at UHAS, based in the small town of Hohoe.”
Read more of this article featured in Academica’s Today’s Top Ten in Higher Ed on July 9, 2018.
On June 15, 2018, Carleton University honoured Steven Davis, founder of AWB, with an honorary degree. Steven was recognized “for his valuable contribution to the promotion of higher education in developing countries and his distinguished academic career.” See his speech here or read his convocation address:
The Importance of Universities
Mr. Vice-Chancellor, Chair of the Board of Governors, graduands, honoured guests and friends, I would like to thank Carleton University for granting me an honorary degree. I regard the honor to be not just for me, but for those who worked with me at Academics Without Borders, a bi-lingual charity I founded in 2007 and ran for ten years.
Congratulations to all of you who are being awarded degrees today. You have just spent several years in one of the most important kinds of institutions in the world, a university. We take our universities for granted. I know I did until I started Academics Without Borders.
To see how important universities are, imagine that all of them closed. Life would go on as before, but only for a short time. As the doctors, teachers, scientists, engineers etc. retired there would be no one to replace them, since the universities educate these people. Slowly but surely life as we know it would grind to a halt. The hospitals and schools would close; the buildings and bridges wouldn’t be built or replaced; there would be no more cures for diseases and technological advances. It would become a very hard life. In fact, it would be unimaginable.
This is the sort of difficulty many developing countries face. They don’t have the experts and professionals to provide their citizens with basic public services and to assist in their development. There are universities through out the developing world, but they need and want help.
This is where Academics Without Borders comes in. AWB is a stand-alone Canadian charity whose mission is to assist developing countries improve their universities.
Here’s an example. Makerere University in Ethiopia, asked AWB for help in creating a residency program to train cardiologists. AWB sent two cardiology professors to the university on a fact-finding mission. The most startling part of their report was that in Ethiopia, a country of 100 million, there are only 12 cardiologists, all of them practicing in and around the capital. And there is only one very small residency program to train cardiologists for the country.
Cardiovascular disease is one of the major causes of mortality in Ethiopia. There, it does not just affect old folks like me, but young people like you. Consequently, many Ethiopians die young, unable to reach their full potential and realize their dreams. This lack of well-trained professionals is just one example among many throughout the developing world.
Let me say why I founded AWB. I was about to retire. However, I wanted to stay connected to university life, since I loved the forty years I spent teaching and doing research. I was thinking of volunteering for a charity that helped universities in the developing world. Much to my surprise, I found no such organization any where in the world.
I discovered that government aid agencies and the foundations which support the developing world concentrated on primary education and basic health. This was shocking. It is in post-secondary institutions where teachers and health workers are trained. You can’t improve primary education and basic health without-well-educated teachers and health workers. This led me to founding AWB.
I stepped down from directing AWB in October 2017. I left it in good hands and it is now the largest charity of its kind in the world that helps universities in developing countries.
Let me say something about developing countries. They are low income countries, many of whose citizens suffer from malnutrition, illiteracy, high infant and maternal mortality, and shorter life spans. Two billion people live in such countries, a quarter of the world’s population. But they don’t lack talented, dynamic, intelligent people who very much want to change their countries. My greatest pleasure at AWB was working in partnership with some of these people who I regarded to be my colleagues.
If you are not sure what you are going to do with your life, might I suggest that you consider working side by side with people in the developing world and help them realize their dreams for their countries. I did it for ten years and it changed my life.
Reprinted with permission from Steven Davis.
“’What have you done to make the world a better place?’
It’s a question we all ask ourselves at some point in our lives. It’s also the question driving some of the most important work happening in post-secondary education today.
Academics and institutions across Canada are collaborating with organizations from around the world to solve some of the globe’s most challenging problems. Many of these problems can be found in developing countries, where challenges related to education, healthcare, and infrastructure remain significant, although much progress has been made against difficult odds. Academics have taken a collaborative approach to addressing these challenges, working directly with individuals and organizations based in these countries to build the capacity they need to address these problems in the long term.
It was with the goal of supporting and organizing this crucial work that Academics Without Borders was founded.”
Read more of this article featured in Academica’s Today’s Top Ten in Higher Ed on May 29, 2018.
Support for AWB announced on the R. Howard Webster Foundation website. See it here! Thank you to this generous funder!
