The Diplomat
The Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) and the Fundación Carolina have brought together their different scholarship, assistantship and internship programs in a single web page that will be presented tomorrow at a ceremony presided over by the King and Queen of Spain.
The new portal Becas de la Cooperación Española (Spanish Cooperation Scholarships) brings together, under the slogan Becas que cambian vidas, becas concebidas para favorecer el bien común (Scholarships that change lives, scholarships designed to promote the common good), all the information on the numerous study plans and professional internships offered by the two institutions promoting the initiative, AECID and Fundación Carolina “in solidarity with the partner countries of the Spanish Cooperation”, as reported yesterday by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The presentation ceremony will take place tomorrow and will be presided over by King Philip VI and Queen Letizia. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya; the Secretary of State for International Cooperation, María Ángeles Moreno Bau; the director of the AECID, Magdy Martínez-Solimán; and the director of the Fundación Carolina, José Antonio Sanahuja, will also take part.
“Spanish Cooperation scholarships are an instrument of excellence, understood as quality training and as the generation of value and social innovation (…), an instrument of horizontal and advanced cooperation that, within the framework of the 2030 Agenda, promotes social development and equal opportunities in close alliance with universities and companies”, AECID assured. “With the launch of this new portal, Spanish Cooperation takes a step forward in strengthening its joint scholarship strategy in solidarity with partner countries”, it added.
The new website, according to Foreign Affairs, provides information on the type of scholarships on offer-scholarships for citizens of Spanish Cooperation partner countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Asia, scholarships linked to the Ibero-American Knowledge Space or scholarships for Spaniards and the European Union-as well as the institutions that offer them -AECID and the Fundación Carolina-.
38,000 beneficiaries of AECID and Fundación Carolina scholarships
Throughout its 74 editions, according to the same source, the Scholarship Programs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the AECID have benefited more than 21,000 Spanish and foreign citizens and have revolved around three main lines of action: the training and formation of human capital, the promotion of Spanish in foreign universities and the promotion of the arts and artistic residencies. Among them are the long-standing scholarships, such as the scholarships for cultural managers, and those that have arisen this year, such as the new AECID scholarships for Young Cooperants, the Water Scholarships, the Africa-MED Scholarships for citizens of Africa and the Middle East or the Raisa Visitors Program, aimed at women leaders from Sub-Saharan Africa.
The different MAEC-AECID scholarship programs are carried out in close collaboration with Spanish and foreign institutions of reference, such as the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome (RAER), the College of Europe, the Royal Academy of Spain (RAE) or the Queen Sofia School of Music. AECID also collaborates closely with Spanish universities.
The Fundación Carolina’s Scholarship Program, which this year celebrates its 21st anniversary, has received more than 800,000 applications and has awarded more than 17,000 scholarships to students and professors from Latin America. In these two decades, it has offered almost 3,500 programs in public and private institutions throughout Spain. In addition, it has signed 3,200 agreements with nearly 300 Spanish and Latin American institutions.
The 2020-2021 call of the Fundación Carolina includes a training offer of 504 scholarships covering all areas of knowledge and is articulated through the following modalities: postgraduate, doctoral program and postdoctoral short stays, teacher mobility program, scholarship programs and institutional studies. In addition, the Fundación Carolina continues to lead academic cooperation between Spain and Latin America and maintains a STEM scholarship program for women, as well as launching the bicentennial scholarship program in priority areas of sustainable development in Central American countries.
