Dr Claudia Murray runs capacity building workshops in Colombia for British Council

The network was created last year by a team from Reading and Oxford Universities as well as the Reading based Statistics for Sustainable Development, a spin-off from the University of Reading.

Workshops were delivered in Bogota and attended by the British Embassy in Colombia as well as Colciencias and the British Council. The photo above shows, from left to right: Mireya McKee; Luis Calzadilla; Oscar Gualdrón González; Juan Pablo Ladino; Andres Fernandez; Edwin Ramirez and Claudia Murray.

The workshops aim to strengthen local capacity in all regions in Colombia, and specifically enhance skills in relation to how ST&I projects are funded, how to calculate and budget projects from the perspective of the public and private sectors, analysis of risk in ST&I as well as how to best manage and organise projects activities by using techniques such as the General Adjusted Methodology.

The work is funded by the Newton-Caldas Fund, the Colombian research council Colciencias under a framework contract between the British Council and the Colombian government. The delivery team is led by Dr Murray and with the support of Mireya McKee (CEO at McKee Innovations), and Colombian consultants Edwin Ramirez (currently Chevening scholar at University of Sussex) and Deisy Fernandez Espitia from the National Federation of Departments, a Colombian government organisation that supports ST&I initiatives across the regions.

The team has already delivered workshops in 4 Colombian cities (Medellin, Barranquilla, Cali and Villavicencio). This week are in Bogota and Nieva.

For more information please visit the network’s website.