News

This year Danida Fellowship Centre awarded Dr. Olman Segura-Bonilla, Director General at the Center for Economic Policies for Sustainable Development (CINPE), in Costa Rica, the Danida Alumni Prize 2021.

By: Nina Vlemmings In June this year 25 Kenyan SDG-pioneers travelled to Copenhagen to participate in the course “Strengthening Policy Dialogue to Accelerate SDG Implementation”, administered by Danida Fellowship Centre.

The Danida Alumni Prize 2021 is awarded to an alum who, based on his or her Danida-funded studies, has contributed to positive change in their home country or area of employment by using innovation and new knowledge as tools of change to further the green transition.

We are pleased to announce a new call for Danida Alumni Activity Grants, allowing Danida Alumni to apply for financial support to organize local activities either off- or online depending on the Covid-19 situation in your country. The terms of this call are in line with the new DFC strategy 2021 – 2025

My name is Ea Elsbøl and I have joined DFC in August 2021 as Programme Manager for the Alumni Programme. I am thrilled to be a part of the Danida Alumni Network team and I very much look forward to working with our many alumni and partners.

On the UN International Bee Day 2021, a team of Danida alumni organized Ghana’s first Honey Festival and knowledge sharing forum in partnership with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Forestry Research Institute of Ghana (CSIR-FORIG). Despite the global honey market doing well, pollinators remain on the decline whilst honey adulteration practices are growing - a trend that can have grave consequences.

I always say that Danida alumni are ambassadors for Denmark: They speak extremely well about Denmark because they have had really good experiences in Denmark, says Lars Steen Nielsen, Denmark’s ambassador to Mexico. He would like to see the alumni network become a global knowledge sharing platform in the future.  

Sharing knowledge is essential for finding sustainable solutions to the challenges facing us today. Sharing knowledge and transforming knowledge into action, however, does not happen by itself. It requires a concerted effort. In Danida Fellowship Centre’s 2021-25 strategy we focus on how the skills and capacities we support can be transformed into action

In addition to the preliminary results of the Danida Alumni Information Survey, which you received in the last DAN newsletter, please find the more detailed results below. In the coming months, the DAN team will prioritize and process the survey results and will consult the local alumni network coordinating teams to make room for their experiences, views and ideas for improvement of the network.

Do you wonder what it takes to assemble participants online and organise a successful hackathon? Based on the first-hand experience of the organisers of the two day virtual UNLEASH Hacks Bangladesh 2020, this webinar on 16 December will give you an insight into what is involved.

The award ceremony where MSc and co-founder of the social enterprise Takataka Plastics, Peter Okwoko, received the Danida Alumni Prize was streamed online online from Kampala.

Join our course in Design Thinking and Innovation and learn how to apply human-centred innovation techniques to address challenges in your organisation and in your community. You will receive a certificate upon completion of the course

On 27 November Peter Okwoko, Danida Alum and MSc from Aalborg University receives the Danida Alumni Prize 2020 for his quick, highly innovative and sustainable response to the Covid-19 crisis. Together with his business partner, Paige Balcom, he started to make face shields from plastic waste.

This event taking place on 31 October is organised by the Nordic Chamber of Commerce Vietnam and Co-hosted by the Nordic Embassies in Vietnam and the Sweden Alumni Network Vietnam and is open to all Nordic Alumni.

Earlier this month about 700 alumni participated in our alumni information survey. Our thanks to all those who took part for giving us your time and much appreciated input. We would like to share some of the key findings with you.