Griffith University’s International Business Development Unit has been awarded three Australia Awards Fellowship grants through Australian Aid, administered by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The Fellowships will fund capacity building programs targeting domestic violence in South-East Asia, sustainable economic development in Vietnam, and monitoring and evaluation planning in Mongolia.

Commencing in May 2014, the first Fellowship ‘Developing policies to combat gender violence in South-East Asia’ will enable a Griffith’s Research Fellow to gather data on Australia’s domestic violence laws, policies and practices from the last 30 years of progressive social policy and political/legal action.

This Fellowship aims to build capability through comparative policy learning and will allow the awarded Fellow access to a rich applied research environment within the ARC Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security (CEPS).

In addition, CEPS will provide the Fellow with opportunities for residence at Griffith University in Brisbane and at the Australian National University in Canberra as well as The University of Sydney in New South Wales to access data about innovative family violence policies and practices, and relevant academic and policy communities in the field.

Under a second Australia Award Fellowship Griffith will host 23 ministry officials from Vietnam in July 2014 for the award-winning program ‘Capacity building for the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI)’.

This innovative program will support the priorities of the Australian Aid program for Vietnam and the Government of Vietnam’s development agenda in two key respects:

  1. It will help develop capacity within MPI to modernise its institutions and operations in order to strengthen its governance and ability to support long-term development goals
  2. The training will help create the human resources and capital required to design policies and reforms for sustainable economic development, with particular regard to infrastructure development, macroeconomic policy design, and Vietnam’s integration in the world economy.

In October 2014, a group of 21 Mongolian senior officials will arrive in Brisbane to participate in Griffith’s third Australia Awards Fellowship program ‘The Monitoring and Evaluation Planning Program for Mongolia’.

Given Mongolia’s rapidly changing economic and social status, this Fellowship will aim to ensure government administrators have the capacity and skills to monitor the activities of government agencies.

The Fellowship will work with Mongolia’s Cabinet Secretariat to streamline government policies, processes and regulations of the country’s accelerating development context.

Griffith’s Australia Awards Fellowship recipients are from central and local governments and will gain a better understanding of the importance of effective monitoring and evaluation in government.

For more information on these award-winning programs, please contact the International Business Development Unit on [email protected].