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University of Wisconsin-Madison offers training opportunities either on-campus or in-country.
Courses range from formal university graduate-level courses to 2- to 4-week workshops. Courses can
be geared to the needs of the students. For example, courses can be adapted as refreshers for
experienced staff or as beginning courses designed to get new employees started. Instructors will travel
to Zambia to conduct short courses and/or assist Zambians in training local staff.
If employed as STTA to interface with the CSO and the MAFF (item 3 above), the instructor
will spend up to two months per year in Zambia working on data problems. Coordination of STTA
visits and training plans would increase effectiveness.
The University of Wisconsin offers additional courses in monitoring and evaluation, research
methods, rapid rural appraisal methods and land tenure issues periodically at various African sites
(e.g., Senegal, Madagascar, Uganda, and The Gambia).
The CSO prefers locally-organized courses as they afford opportunities for a larger number
of officers to attend. However, this by no means precludes training abroad in specialized areas.
Further, as it is difficult to identify with perfect knowledge all training needs in advance, the CSO
strongly advises maintaining flexibility in choice of training programs during the course of project
design.