Inter-Centre Collaboration - Southeast Asian Ministers of Education ...

1. How we have to pull out the resources and why we have to works together?
Dr Elinda Pefianco, SEAMEO INNOTECH shared her ideas and experience
as follow:
- As a centre director, we should look at cycles: look at what we have,
strategizing and sustainability with partners.
- SEAMEO INNOTECH has set up a new Business Development Division
to create corporate planning and partnership and to work as a window to
other worlds. Besides the centre has opened up to opportunities,
improved human and financial resources and involved in other
educational organizations and private sectors.
- The centre director acts as a salesman.
- We should move forward from “quality evaluation” to “valued evaluation”
which considers more on valued innovation built from existing resources.
It is important for us to think innovatively and create value added into our
business.
Dr Gatot, SEAMEO SEAMOLEC explained that he sees ASEAN as one
community. His goal for SEAMEO SEAMOLEC is to serve one million people
by 2010. He suggested that SEAMEO Centres should keep updated and find
opportunities around them and negotiate and talk with prominent and relevant
people.
2. What are the lessons learned?
Dr Gatot of SEAMEO SEAMOLEC explained that we should understand the
demand of the region, explore needs of the local governments and be
proactive. We should pay attention to all levels of management - even the
lower management level is a valuable resource for development of the centre.
Besides, he suggested that we should work smartly and know our partners
before we talk to them.
3. From your opinion, what are challenges and how we should solve these
problems?
Dr Thinh of SEAMEO RETRAC shared his experiences that SEAMEO
RETRAC has 4 sources of funding: 1) host government 2) SEAMEO 3)
Donors 4) Income generating activities. He suggested that the SEAMEO
Centres should utilize the existing resources by providing the quality training,
focusing on specific area or finding the niche market, not forgetting serving
the centre’ goals and the region’s demands.
For example, SEAMEO RETRAC has collaborated with SEAMEO RELC for
the establishment of English language courses for educators, teachers and
general public to fulfill the high demand of trainings on the English language.
Besides, keeping a close connection with alumni for promoting further
programmes and other activities is also an important marketing strategy of
SEAMEO RETRAC. (Appendix 3: Presentation of Dr Do Huy Thinh,
SEAMEO RETRAC)
Dr Thinh also suggested that we should be proactive in joint researches,
training activities such as involvement in organizing seminars or conferences.
Besides, he encouraged staff exchange programme to establish a sense of
belonging and as a part of human development programme for them to learn
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