Global Opportunity Initiative 2021

The Global Opportunity Initiative (GOI) is CALS Global’s cohort-based faculty development program geared towards capacity building, network development, systems thinking, and building teams to pursue global initiatives, and has been available to CALS faculty during 2018, 2019, and 2021. The theme of the third offering of GOI was “strengthening food systems for food security, health, and community vitality “. In collaboration with the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine GOI 2021 was conducted virtually because of restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. For the first time, the entire GOI experience was shared with our partners at the Center for Sustainable Agriculture and Agribusiness Management (CESAAM) at Egerton University in Kenya. Twenty-four faculty members from CALS, Vet Med, Egerton University, the University of Rwanda, Sokoine University (Tanzania), and Gulu University (Uganda) participated in 24 hours of virtual “spring training” during March through May 2021. During spring training, participants learned and practiced systems thinking, democratizing approaches to identifying research challenges, numerous tools for identifying resources needed to address wicked problems, and refined their research “pitch”. During June 2021, participants spent another 16 hours working in teams to identify and draft roadmaps for attacking challenges related to animal health, food systems, and human nutrition. During the upcoming years, CALS Global and CESAAM will help GOI faculty identify and compete for funding opportunities to tackle the challenges identified during our GOI collaboration.

If travel conditions permit, the VT GOI team will travel to Kenya and Tanzania during summer 2022 to meet face-to-face with our East African colleagues and further advance our partnership.