UOC’s School of Cooperation bodies network

Sept. 23, 2011 - PRLog -- During the meeting, the Director of the UOC Campus for Peace Eduard Vinyamata announced the preparation of new courses, including Management of Natural Disasters with the Organisation of American States (OAS), scheduled to begin this October; the Disarmament and Development course organised in conjunction with the International Peace Bureau (IPB), or the Decentralised Cooperation course with the Catalan Cooperation Fund. Vinyamata also provided information on the upcoming projects and alliances with other bodies in Spain and further afield, such as that with the University of Haiti or the University of Yaoundé in Cameroon.

The Director of the UOC Campus for Peace highlighted the importance of establishing links. “These offer the possibility for new collaboration between bodies and even the sharing of course curricula.” Likewise, Vinyamata encouraged those attending to share, openly and online, training materials and content on the future Virtual School of Cooperation – a catalogue of courses under a Creative Commons licence openly accessible to anyone that will start up in June this year. “The Campus for Peace offers humanitarian bodies this virtual content platform. The initiative has already been joined by the UNAM, the FAO and Amnesty International Catalonia, and we hope that many more will soon do so,” he added.

School of Cooperation: Integrating two areas

The School of Cooperation’s Coordinator Carme Anguera and the Academic Coordinator Nati Cabrera told those present about the uniting of the two branches of the School of Cooperation: the Postgraduate Area, and the Programmes and Projects Area. “With this decision, the Campus for Peace’s own courses will gain weight and visibility within the UOC’s course offering,” stressed Anguera.

The coordinators of each organisation presented their respective projects and looked back over the year. Andrea Compagno, a lecturer on the course on prevention of and protection against child sexual exploitation, talked about the characteristics of the course which looks at the different forms of child exploitation and how to prevent them. Silvia Penón, from the Catalan Social Volunteering Federation, highlighted her organisation’s mission to raise awareness regarding the figure of the social volunteer. In turn, Tito García and Sònia Anoll from the Red Cross talked about the organisation’s long history of collaborating with the UOC, which dates back to the year 2000. Alicia Cabezudo from the IPB, the world’s oldest body working for world peace, talked about the Disarmament and Development course which is soon to start. Josep Vicens Mestre from Amnesty International Catalonia stressed their desire to create networks. He also presented the idea to develop a course for UN researchers in Colombia.

Alongside the School of Cooperation team, the meeting was attended by the following bodies: the Catalan Social Volunteering Federation, the Spanish Red Cross, IPB, Amnesty International Catalonia and a representative from the course on Prevention of Child Sexual Exploitation (ESCI), Andrea Compagno. Other bodies have also been invited: Ecoserveis, Amnesty International Spain, Adane, the Catalan Cooperation Fund, the Themis.OMT Foundation, Moviment per la Pau, OAS, the World Organisation of the Scout Movement (WOSM), the CIES Foundation, Gaia Education and Natural Step.

UOC – Universitat Oberta de Catalunya - www.uoc.edu

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