Project overview
FAO's Strategic Framework has highlighted the role of training as one of the Organization's core functions: “Providing support to institutions at all levels, including through capacity development, to prepare, implement, monitor and evaluate evidence-based policies and programmes and to stimulate investment.”
Strategic Framework, Paragraph 43.4
Background
Since 2001, with the creation of the FODEPAL Project, FAO's capacity development activities in the region have had the support of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), as a strategic partner. From this collaboration, the Public Policy Training Center emerged in 2008, as part of the Support Project for the Hunger-Free Latin America and the Caribbean 2025 Initiative.
Renamed FAO Training, it was consolidated as the specialized area in capacity development of the FAO Regional Office, and currently implements activities designed for FAO projects and programs in the countries of the region.
Throughout our history, we have had important achievements such as:
- More than 270 thousand users in 350 face-to-face and virtual training activities in 4 languages.
- Collaboration with 41 partners from academia, government, cooperation agencies and NGOs.
- The only FAO Regional Office with a training unit dedicated to all technical areas.
- Promoting the quality, scalability and sustainability of FAO training in the region.
- Collaboration with other regions and training teams such as FAO e-learning Academy and integrated into the Virtual Learning Centers.
Capacity building
In the Recommendations of the 38th Regional Conference of Latin America and the Caribbean, countries have established the need to develop capacities in specific priority areas for the region.
In the FAO Strategy for Science and Innovation (2022), countries have requested that the potential of science and innovation be fully exploited to overcome the complex social, economic and environmental challenges facing agri-food systems. Capacity development is included in the three pillars that make up this Strategy.
With the creation of FAO Campus, the FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean hopes to respond to these demands with the design of a new capacity development program, which values the experience of the region and organizes its work based on four axes of intervention:
- Promote transformative partnerships for capacity development in the region.
- Strengthen interfaces between science, academia and policy formulation.
- Identify, prioritize and expand methodologies, innovations and technologies, for their dissemination and adoption in the field.
- Strengthening the capacities of FAO and our partners to promote science and innovation.
Only with effective training processes, better public policies, the exchange of good practices and the incorporation of innovations will we be able to achieve better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life, without leaving anyone behind.