Dear User:

Once again we are pleased to send you the Newsletter of the Educational Portal of the Americas in an attempt to offer you the best access to reliable sources of information regarding educational opportunities and events for the promotion of human development in the region. As always, your comments and suggestions are most welcome.

Cordially,

The Educational Portal of the Americas

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• New Links for Navigating the Portal

• Social Capital and Volunteerism

• Scholarships for the distance education course "Quality in Basic Education"

• Scholarships for Social Capital and Volunteerism

• Scholarships for the ICT in Action Workshop

• Updating the Distance Learning Courses and Programs Database

• Broadening Educational Horizons

Social Capital and Volunteerism

In this edition of "Topic of the Month", we encourage our users to prepare brief essays regarding Human Capital and Volunteerism. Send us your opinions and points of view in this important area, which includes unemployment, poverty, access to education, access to health and citizen safety. Visit the Portal to review the suggested topics, as well as publication guidelines. Also send us your suggestions for other themes to be considered in Topic of the Month.

http://www.educoas.org/portal/en/tema/tema.aspx?culture=en&tabindex=36&childindex=0

Scholarships for the distance education course "Quality in Basic Education"

Through the Institute of Advanced Studies for the Americas (INEAM), the IACD/OAS is offering scholarships for the course "Quality in Basic Education". The course will be offered in Spanish through the Virtual Classroom of the Educational Portal of the Americas. It is scheduled to begin on May 5, 2003 and will take place over a 12-week period. The course presents an introduction to the philosophy of quality as applied to education, and strives to offer teachers and administrators conceptual tools to allow them to confront processes of improving educational services. To request a scholarship, please send an application to the IACD before April 15, 2003 through your country's National Liaison Office. Please click here for additional details.

It should be pointed out that INEAM has just launched its academic program with various courses for training tutors for the "Quality in Basic Education" course, which trained 72 people through distance learning during the second half of 2002. Earlier this year, the first onsite meeting, "Seminar-Workshop for Training Tutors for the Quality in Education course", was held in Miami, Florida from February 12-14. Over a 3-day period, Dr. Monica Luque, Academic Coordinator of the Quality in Basic Education course, directed the workshop with over 27 participants from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, Mexico and Spain--20 of whom were given scholarships by the OAS. Activities included a debate regarding quality in education and a presentation by all participants of best practices and regional initiatives being carried out in the field. At the culmination of the event, all participants received a certificate issued by INEAM certifying them to act as tutors for the Quality in Basic Education course scheduled to take place, as previously announced, on May 5.

Scholarships for Social Capital and Volunteerism

The IACD/OAS is offering scholarships for the international event "Movilizando el Capital Social y el Voluntariado de América Latina," which will take place on May 22-23, 2003 in the Diego Portales Convention Center in Santiago, Chile. The event is being organized by the Government of Chile and the Inter-American Initiative on Social Capital, Ethics and Development, which was established by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) with the support of the Government of Norway, the Economic and Social Council of Spain, the Youth Program of the IDB, the Universidad Padre Hurtado of Chile and the IACD/OAS. To be considered for a scholarship, requests must be sent to the IACD before April 25, 2003 through the respective National Liasion Office. Please click here for more details on the scholarship.

Scholarships for the ICT in Action Workshop

With support from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Portal Development Gateway, Academy for Educational Development and the Institute for Connectivity in the Americas, the IACD/OAS is organizing the workshop "ICTs in Action: Strategies for the Social Development of Central America". The event will take place from May 14-16, 2003 in the academic center of the Institute of Advanced Studies for the Americas (INEAM) in Miami. The IACD is offering scholarships to participate in the event, whose goal is to present, explain and analyze the different applications of Information and Communication Technologies (TICs) for promoting economic and social development of the less privileged sectors of Central America (including Mexico and Dominican Republic). To request a scholarship, please send an application to the IACD before April 4, 2003 through your country's National Liaison Office. Please click here for additional details.

Updating the Distance Learning Courses and Programs Database

The Educational Portal of the Americas announces that the distance learning courses and programs database will be updated during the first week of March. At this time, any information that you have saved in "My Favorites" will be automatically deleted and no copies will be saved in our servers. We therefore request that if you are interested in saving this information beyond the first week of March, please copy it outside of the personal pages you have established on the Portal. "My Favorites" will be available again the following day.

http://www.educoas.org/portal/courses.aspx?culture=en&tabindex=53&childindex=0

Broadening educational horizons

The IACD/OAS administers one of the oldest and largest scholarship and training programs in the Hemisphere. Each year, thousands of scholarships are awarded for undergraduate and graduate studies, as well as professional training in recognized institutions and centers of excellence of the member states and permanent observers. We encourage you to review the scholarship announcements currently available for academic studies and professional development, through both onsite and distance learning.

http://www.educoas.org/portal/en/becas/convoca.aspx?culture=en&tabindex=44&childindex=150