Funding learning for fifty years.

• Author: Kiernan, James Patrick
• Position: INTER-AMERICAN SYSTEM

From the first summit of the presidents of the American nations, held in Panama in 1956, to the present day, governments of the Western Hemisphere have relied on OAS assistance to train the human resources needed for their developmental and societal needs. As a result of that meeting and the follow-up meetings of presidential representatives, the OAS graduate scholarship program was created in 1958. The OAS General Secretariat later estimated that between 1958 and 1991, through that scholarship program and specialized training programs, the OAS was responsible for furthering the education of 86,669 citizens of the OAS member states!

It was clear from the time the OAS Charter was adopted in 1948 that the development desired by member states governments would require persons trained in the widest variety of professions. In 1950, through the Technical Cooperation Program, the OAS began to sign agreements with member states governments in which the governments committed to contributing the sites for training centers and the OAS assumed the financial responsibility of paying instructors and awarding fellowships. This led to the creation of regional research centers in many of the member states with the mission of addressing human resource needs in specific development areas. The Center for Statistics in Chile (CIENES) and the Urban Planning Center in Peru (PIARPUR) are good examples. Most of the centers had one or more training programs each year, attended both by nationals and inter-American participants. Some of these inter-American centers remained in operation until the 1980s.

CIENES in Chile offers an interesting example of how the OAS has sparked development in member states through these centers and how it provided training opportunities when they were needed. CIENES trained most of the people in Latin America who became the chief statistical officers in their countries. These individuals in turn influenced the universities of their countries to incorporate the study of statistics into their curriculum, and this made CIENES training unnecessary. The CIENES program was terminated and the OAS went on to address the next topic of training needed by the member states.

In 1958, in order to further focus on the human resource needs of the member states, the OAS Council established a scholarship program for graduate study called the Regular Training Program (PRA). Thus, from the very beginning, the OAS "provided fellowships for the advanced...