16th Meeting of Senior Fellowships Officers of the ... - Development

Administrative Issues 53
lowships more equally. During the period 2000 – 2005, 61% of the fellowships were
within South-South cooperation. The percentage of female fellows had increased from
an initial 18% at the beginning of the programme to 45% in 2005. Two thirds of the
grants were allocated for activities in reforestation and forest management, 24% for
forestry industry and 10% for economic information and market intelligence. Contrary
to other UN organizations, the ITTO long-term fellowships over the past twenty
years had increased while short-term activities had decreased. More precisely, training
activities shorter than 3 months had fallen from 82% to 45%, while training activities
longer than 6 months, especially longer than 1 year, had climbed from 5% to 43%.
That trend had strained the budget and ITTO had to reduce the number of admitted
fellows. With regard to the employment background, there had been a shift away from
researchers to NGO staff.
175. Ms. Aoki then presented the ITTO Fellowship Survey. In order to include the voices
of the fellows in the 20th Year Report of ITTO, questionnaires had been sent to 50
randomly selected fellows who had undertaken activities between 2000 and 2005. As
many as 33 questionnaires, representing 16 nationalities, had been returned by the
deadline in September 2006. The questionnaire consisted of five questions pertaining
to the nature of the fellowships, the effects they had on their careers, the usefulness
of the programme; the role the latter had played in promoting sustainable forest
management and sustainable development in their countries and ways to improve the
programme.
176. Respondents rated the fellowships programme as highly useful to generate indispensable
human resources in sustainable forest management sectors in tropical countries. It
was considered to be very efficient, transparent and flexible. The wide range of training
activities was also much appreciated. Fellowships played an important role in sustainable
forest management and sustainable development of the forestry sectors in member
countries. It bridged the gap between the developed and developing countries and it
provided opportunities for South-South cooperation. However, many survey respondents
provided suggestions for further improvement. Highly ranked among their suggestions
was the desire to orient the programme towards post-graduate training to
a greater extend, to separate the support for short courses from post-graduate programmes
and to handle the upper fellowship limit more flexibly in critical cases. Further,
they suggested to promote awareness of ITTO fellowships programmes among
young researchers and field workers in developing countries and to publish all final
reports of the fellows on the website of the ITTO Fellowships Programme in order to
disseminate the results of the fellowship activities and to enable the potential applicants
to familiarize themselves with the benefits of the programme. Other respondents suggested
to establish a Forum, an alumni network, a newsletter or a mailing list for all
awardees to discuss important issues of common concern and exchange information
and experience. Another suggestion was to get the fellows to organize a small project to
pass on their experience, knowledge and technology within their organizations upon