International Organizations and MEC

On Tuesday, June 30^th, I had the privilege to participate in a round table with international organizations that assist the Ministry of Education (MEC). The World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Development Bank of Latin America (CAF), the European Union, UNICEF and others got together with the Minister of Education, Marta Lafuente, to present current projects and discuss future plans and challenges.

For me, this two-hour meeting was International Organizations and Economic Development in real life. For the last weeks, most of my responsibilities here at the WB consisted in doing follow ups and pushing MEC to do this or that task stipulated in the WB’s contract with MEC. However, it never occurred to me that there are other agencies that require the same commitment from MEC. MEC has to respond to more than 5 different agencies, we only respond to MEC. Therefore, this meeting gave me a holistic panorama of MEC’s involvement with other agencies and allowed me to grasp the complexity of working with a public institution (from the agency’s point of view) and how MEC has to juggle all the projects with different agencies.

Minister Lafuente presented improvements in school infrastructure, an Open Data portal, the implementation of a new national evaluation (Evaluacion Censal) and the participation of Paraguay for the first time in PISA-D (PISA for development). The IDB and the European Union assisted in projects related to evaluation, the CAF was involved in infrastructure, and the World Bank provided technical assistance to design and attract funds for teacher training and ICT projects. This was the perfect example for me to see how different agencies focus on particular topics and how the gigantic web (National Agenda/Plan) is slowly woven.

This International Round Table will be shared as a “best practice” in the MERCOSUR meeting in November.

If you have time and want to try your Spanish, check out the Ministry’s Open Data initiative. This practice is very common for the US (we’ve been using it for our Research and Statistics class), but it’s new here: http://datos.mec.gov.py/data/visualizaciones

Here's a video of the meeting ( I'm in it ;) ) and some photos.  

My name is Maria Fe dos Santos and I'm from Asuncion, Paraguay. I'm currently doing an internship at the World Bank in my home country. I assist World Bank consultants and maintain communication with the Ministry of Education and other organizations.