Study Exchange Visits: Embracing an Impactful Opportunity

Far too often, international development projects, caught in their own hustle and bustle, don’t commit the time and energy to engage with similar projects across the country, region, or world. Study Exchange Visits offer an engaging opportunity for development practitioners and policy makers to connect across similarities and differences. In short, Study Exchange Visits involve representatives from one development project spending strategic, intentional, and mutually informative time in another project’s context. Although the initial investments cannot be ignored, project leaders should not discount the benefits of increased intra-group collaboration, mutual learning, and improved development outcomes. These opportunities for progress are especially salient as Human Rights Day marked the 75^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ proclamation, with Article 26 emphasizing education as a human right.

In both Georgia and Tajikistan, education system leaders are challenged to find the right balance between centralized authority and school autonomy. Compared to Tajikistan, where nearly all decisions and authority flow directly from the President’s office and the Ministry of Education and Sciences to less-autonomous schools, the Georgian system allows extensive auton

Read the full blog on the Basic Education Coalition website for pointers on how any implementing partner can build mutual learning and support between projects, based on the above example.

Banner image caption: The Tajik Deputy Minister of Education and Science Abdulzoda presents a traditional Chakan embroidery to the principal of No. 2 Sagarejo Nugzar Chanturia Public School following a hospitable and informative school visit. The photo was taken by Jackson Wu-Pong.

Posts on the blog represent the views of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of Chemonics.