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Short course on youth, peacebuilding, and sustainability available for young peace advocates

Short course on youth, peacebuilding, and sustainability available for young peace advocates

by | May 11, 2021 | MSU-IIT Campus

An ongoing call for applications offers young peacebuilders a free short course on the intersection of youth, peacebuilding, and sustainability. The short course is designed by the Seeds for Mindanao Advocacy and Youth Leadership (SMAYL), with support from the U.S. Mission to ASEAN and Cultural Vista. SMAYL is one of the recipients of the 2021 Seeds for the Future Award, competing with over 600 applicants from across Southeast Asia. The Young Southeast Asian Leadership Initiative (YSEALI) Seeds for the Future Small Grants Competition funds up to $15,000 of each grantee project.  

SMAYL is the brainchild of MSU-IIT’s Political Science faculty, Dr. Primitivo Cabanes Ragandang III, along with Dr. Mary Koren Witting Acuesa and Mr. Charl Mark Ane. The three all hail from Northern Mindanao and have been into youth peacebuilding for many years. For 2021, they will implement a project that aims to empower young peacebuilders through a youth leadership program. The project also aims at providing a venue to understand the Mindanao conflict, the second-oldest conflict in the planet albeit not well-understood even among Filipinos.  

The short course is built around the global recognition of youth’s integral role in peacebuilding, as manifested in the passage of United Nation’s Resolution 2250 (in 2015) and 2535 (in 2020). But while young peacebuilders have captured the spotlight among peacebuilding practitioners, funders, and scholars internationally, there is prevalent unsustainability among youth peacebuilding initiatives, thus the need to develop a locally grown support system for young peacebuilders. Such a ‘local turn’ in peacebuilding empowers the locals and is also linked to peacebuilding sustainability.  

This 54-hour short course is coupled with an online learning hub. It generally aims to provide regular support, feedbacking, and eventually establish a network of young peacebuilders in the region. The program offers young peacebuilding a hybridized short course geared towards developing an action agenda on the intersection of youth, peace, and sustainability.  

The short course is a hybrid of self-paced and live teleconferencing sessions. Self-paced sessions allow the participants to access and comply with the course content at any time within the three-day module schedule. Live teleconferencing via Zoom enable the participants to engage with the speaker and course mates in a real-time interactive session. 

Deadline for applications is 31 May 2021. For more information about SMAYL and the short course application, visit them on Facebook and the link for application.

 — contributed article

CSM’s Sumaya to speak during IMaNema’s Nematology Seminar Day 2021

CSM’s Sumaya to speak during IMaNema’s Nematology Seminar Day 2021

by | May 11, 2021 | Graduate Science & Mathematics, Main News & Updates, Science & Mathematics

Assoc. Prof. Sumaya, who teaches at the Department of Biological Sciences of MSU-IIT’s College of Science and Mathematics (CSM), will impart her professional and personal experiences of working in the field of nematology with her talk entitled Life after nematology graduate studies: making the most of every opportunity to learn, lead and serve during the Nematology Seminar Day 2021 that will be held on May 19, 2021.

Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT) faculty member Assoc. Prof. Nanette Hope Sumaya’s talk will be one of the highlights in the Nematology Seminar Day 2021, an annual event organized by the Faculty of Science of Ghent University (UGent) in Ghent, Belgium, in association with Vlaamse Interuniversitaire Raad -Universitaire Ontwikkelingssamenwerking (VLIR-UOS), Nematology Education in Sub-Sahara Africa (NEMEDUSSA), and the Eramus + Programme of the European Union.

This year, the seminar focuses talks about life after getting a degree in Nematology and career development. A workshop on “Let’s talk Gender!’’ will also take place in the afternoon.

Assoc. Prof. Sumaya, an alumna of International MSc in Agro- and Environmental Nematology (IMaNema), formerly known as Postgraduate International Nematology Course or PINC, was invited by IMaNema of UGent to speak to students at Auditorium 6 of Campus Ledeganck, 04.10 – L2.

Aside from Assoc. Prof. Sumaya’s talk, the event will also feature talks of other invited speakers, namely, Mrs. Lirette M. Taning of ILVO and UGent (Faculty of Biotechnology); Dr. Annika Pieterse of Nemlab/ Stellenbosch University in South Africa; Mr. David Pires of MED/University of Évora & INIAV in Portugal; Dr. Sidy Diakhate of Green Agro Consulting in Sénégal; Mrs. Lilian Mendoza, the Director of the Human Resources Department of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Nigeria; and Dr. Gundula Fisher, a social scientist and gender expert from IITA-CGIAR.

The Seminar Day, which is organized in the frame of the Summer Course: Networking and Seminars for the IMaNema students, is also open to the public and can be followed online.

MSU-IIT students are encouraged to join the seminar online. To register, visit eventmanager.ugent.be/nemaseminar

For more information about the activity, click this link: https://www.imanema.ugent.be/workshops/seminarday.

— contributed news