Smart Diaspora – Quality Education Innovators
The Republic of Moldova faces with an outstanding migration phenomenon. Officially, approximately 845 thousand people work abroad, unofficially, this figure exceeds one million Moldovan citizens. Moldova’s biggest loss is the massive “brain drain” process. A lot of young professionals with a steady education choose to go abroad to find work and most of them decide to remain in their host country after a couple of years. However, the phenomenon of diaspora poses not only challenges but also offers potential benefits to communities in both the homeland and the diaspora. A large part of diaspora members is known as influencers given their European expertise and practices that could be shared with the Moldovans that decided to remain in their country. Thus, diaspora members and the R. Moldova alike are realizing that both can benefit in important ways from strong partnerships addressing areas of mutual concern, ranging from identity in the diaspora to development of the homeland.
One mutual concern is to contribute to ensuring quality education in the Republic of Moldova. In this respect, Center for Innovation and Policies in Moldova in partnership with National Agency for Quality Assurance in Professional Education and with the financial support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and International Organization for Migration (IOM) are implementing the project "Smart Diaspora - Quality Education Innovators" aiming to engage the academic and professional diaspora in assessing the education quality of the educational programmes of the Moldovan universities.
Within "Smart Diaspora - Quality Education Innovators" project, CIPM has created a community of diaspora members, mainly from EU countries, that will contribute with European expertise to quality education in Moldova. 11 diaspora members will participate in a Learning Incubator in Chisinau where national experts will present the challenges and weaknesses in quality assurance in professional education and afterwards will engage the diaspora in brainstorming and developing a holistic approach on quality education based on their European expertise.
The Smart Diaspora project is only possible due to the support from the following entities:
