KDI School continues to develop its cooperative network both in Korea and abroad. On November 9, KDI School signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Korea Credit Guarantee Fund (KODIT). The newly minted agreement covers exchange in both human resources and information resources. In particular, KODIT is expected to offer internship opportunities to KDI School’s international students.

KDI School also signed an agreement with the University of Leeds to facilitate student mobility. The School’s well-celebrated Global Master’s Program (GMP) now has another potential destination for its students to study in the UK.

Also active in establishing cooperative ties was the K-Developedia Team at KDI School. K-Developedia Team, which operates the K-Developedia platform online, signed new MOU agreements with the International Poverty Reduction Center of China (IPRCC) and the Vietnam Institute for Development Strategies (VIDS).

Communication Officer Hwan Hee JEONG with the K-Developedia Team explained that K-Developedia is expected to cooperate with IPRCC over poverty related issues. More specifically, the MOU with IPRCC includes the joint organization of seminars, academic forums, and international conferences. Both of parties also agreed to dispatch personnel to seminars or research programs at each organization to facilitate exchange of research information and share research outcomes. Based on the agreement, each party is allowed to post their information on each other’s knowledge sharing platforms.

Meanwhile, IPRCC was jointly initiated and established by the Chinese Government, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and other international organizations in May, 2005. IPRCC has been designed to provide a platform for knowledge sharing, information exchange, and international collaboration associated with poverty reduction and development.

Perhaps the most important development, however, would be the new agreements for KDI School’s new Development Knowledge Open Access (DKOA) platform funded by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance of Korea. The K-Developedia Team and VIDS agreed to develop the Vietnamese equivalent of K-Developedia i.e. the aforementioned V-Developedia as well as DKOA which is expected to offer an open online environment where content on development scattered across the world can be gathered accessed i.e. a “one-stop shop” of development related resources.

As for VIDS, the organization was established in 2009 on the foundation of two departments – the former State Planning Committee (now the Ministry of Planning and Investment) and the Department of Long-term National Overall Economic Planning and the Department for Economic Zoning and Planning. The institute is mostly involved in research on socio-economic development.

JEONG revealed that K-Developedia will help build a repository for development related content in Vietnam. K-Developedia Team will be responsible for assigning and developing a local administration group which will take care of the management of materials and metadata for the national repository.

Moving forward, the K-Developedia Team is expected to expand its partnership in similar programs with other countries like Cambodia, Indonesia, India, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia. JEONG said, "We are trying to build relationship with developing country to assist them to build open access repository."

By Arifenie FIRTRI NUR [2016 MPP, Indonesia]