At the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Research in Agriculture (SEARCA), human resource development remains to be the heart of our programs and activities.
We are part of the 15 regional centers of the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) based in Bangkok, Thailand. SEAMEO is an intergovernmental body founded in 1965. It promotes cooperation among Southeast Asian nations through activities in education, science, and culture. Our member countries are Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Our vision is to be Southeast Asia’s leader in the science and practice of agriculture and rural development. We commit ourselves to strengthening institutional capacity in agriculture and rural development through graduate study, research, short-term training, and knowledge exchange.
Our Short-Term Training Program (STTP) strives to equip agricultural development workers in Southeast Asia (SEA) with specific technical and managerial competencies and ultimately brings organizations to a higher level of performance. Our STTP opens continuing learning opportunities to mid- and top-level government and nongovernmental personnel in the region who could not be released for long-term graduate studies.
Our STTP offers relevant and high-quality training of trainers (ToT) programs that would lead participants to initiate action projects on natural resource management and rural growth promotion in their respective countries toward poverty reduction and food security.
Since its inception in 1970, SEARCA’s STTP has graduated about 12,000 training.
By 2009, our STTP aims at producing a critical mass of agricultural professionals in the region who possess not only advanced technical and managerial knowledge and skills but also imbued with pragmatic regional and global perspectives, a deep senses of social responsibility, and strong decision-making influence to address regional and global agriculture and rural development issues and concerns.
Partnership remains the most viable mechanism toward this mission of strengthening capacities of individuals and institutions in the SEA region due to resource constraints or to some bureaucratic challenges. SEARCA recognizes the critical role of the private and business sector in capacity building and national development. We believe that the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has taken a deeper meaning and dimension among business companies. Investment in short-term training is a promising venue for the practice of CSR considering the long-term benefits that it may bring.
In general, the SEARCA Training P.I.M. Program aims to increase the number of competent human resources in the SEA region and create a pool of experts in relevant subject matters. It has the following specific objectives::
- Strengthen SEARCA’s mandate in providing high quality and relevant short-term training courses to SEA nationals;
- Mainstream the CSR of business companies in capacity building in the SEA region; and
- Put in place strategic partnerships between SEARCA and relevant business companies in capacity building toward agriculture and rural development in the SEA region.
A business company may become SEARCA’s Training Partner through any of the following arrangements:
- Full/partial group or individual trainee sponsorship to a specific training course. A SEARCA Training Partner may either sponsor an individual trainee or a group of trainees coming from either one agency or from different agencies of choice. Full sponsorship will cover tuition, international and local travel, course materials, health and accident insurance premium, and full board and lodging. On the other hand, a partial sponsorship may cover any of the expenses above amounting to half of the total cost/course participant.
- Cost-sharing of total course budget. Interested organizations can choose to share the cost of the total course budget from a minimum of 15 percent up to a maximum of 85 percent.
- Counterparting of services. This may either be in the form of providing a vehicle for local trips, printing of course streamer and other promotional materials, serving as resource persons, use of facilities, etc. The cost would amount to not less than 15 percent of the total course budget.
SEARCA may have more than one training partner in conducting a course depending on the amount pledged and generated versus the total cost of the course.
On the average, the course cost/participant at SEARCA is US$2,000 for two weeks and US$1,300 for one week. Thus, SEARCA requires having a total of 12 participants to offer a course cost-effectively.
A Memorandum of Agreement shall be sealed off between SEARCA and a training partner at least three weeks before course implementation.
The program is a proactive and win-win approach to partnership toward building individual and institutional capacities for sustained agriculture and rural development in the SEA region.
The program will help SEARCA realize its vision and mission.
For the training partners, the program will help them fulfill their CSR mandate and enable them to gain continuous exposure to a cross-section of professionals and institutions in the region. The exposure may come in the form of prominent company logo display in all course materials, space for display of company products and materials at the course venue, hyperlink to the company website, 100 words of advertising text in course handbook, and insertion of company promotional materials in the course kit of participants.
For inquiries, please contact the Training Department.
