UNDe

Ten Things You Didn’t Know About the World Bank Institute (from the Institute’s website - www.worldbank.org/wbi/):

1. How long has WBI been in operation and how many clients does it reach?
The World Bank Institute began as the Economic Development Institute in 1955, delivering a single six-month course per year on General Development to 20 developing country policymakers in Washington. The Institute was partly funded by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations and had 4 staff. WBI now reaches more than 90,000 people a year through more than 800 activities.

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5. What’s so special about WBI’s approach to learning?
WBI’s country-focused strategy is not just about where we do business, but also about how. Capacity development is a complex process that varies not only by country, but also by sector and even by institution. It requires customizing content to meet specific national needs and priorities and designing programs with long-term institution building in mind. WBI connects people with ideas brining together global and local knowledge and facilitating south-south exchanges of experience about what works, what doesn’t and why. One example is the Shanghai Conference on Scaling Up Poverty Reduction.

WBI accomplishes its goals through training courses and seminars, policy advice, technical assistance, and long-term relationships with service delivery institutions and capacity building organizations. To increase its reach, the Institute also delivers mass products to select clients, using information technologies, mass media, and other knowledge-sharing instruments.

WBI contributes to the international debate on approaches to capacity development by designing and implementing new diagnostic tools and instruments to assess countries capacity development needs (such as country program briefs, capacity development needs assessments, cabinet-level learning retreats, and rapid results initiatives).

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10. Does WBI award scholarships to help build local capacity?
Since 1987, WBI has administered the World Bank’s Joint Japan/Graduate Scholarship Program (more than 3,700 scholarships awarded for graduate study on subjects related to economic development). The program partners with Harvard University, Columbia University, McGill University, Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches sur Le Developpement International, University of Tsukuba, Yokohama National University, and Keio University.

The Government of Japan has provided more than 130 million dollars to the programs to help create an international community of trained professionals in the field of development. Scholars are required to return home on completion of their studies to apply their knowledge and skills to the development of their regions and communities.

WBI also manages the Robert S. McNamara Fellowships Program which awards fellowships for full-time study or research in economic development at the postgraduate level. The program sponsors about 16 scholars a year and has granted some 250 fellowships since 1982.

I would recommend enrolling in one of WBI’s online courses.

Great article in The Economist (Mar 1st 2007) about where to get divorced. The online article is for subscribers only, but you can find it in the author’s newsletter (Yahoo!Groups).

I like especially the start “MARRIAGE may be about love, but divorce is a business.” There are some interesting figures, too - the European Union is the home to 875000 divorces a year. The ending gotta make you think - “The lesson for couples? How you live may determine the length and happiness of your marriage. Where you live is likely to determine how it ends.”

Disclaimer: Don’t take my abridged version as an useful one - it’s better to read the article.