Durban, 3 February 2020 - Representatives from 22 African cities are visiting Durban to receive training on a pioneering initiative that matches real-world challenges in cities with local university students. The event is the first Africa-led training workshop for the Educational Partnerships for Innovation in Communities (EPIC) programme, and signifies the growing international attention garnered by the approach.
Using the EPIC model to match cities’ needs with students in colleges or universities, a broad spectrum of sustainability issues can be tackled in a win-win scenario, where students gain real-world, hands-on experience, allowing them to develop professionally, while local municipalities can leverage the often-untapped expertise of local universities to tackle their sustainability challenges at low costs.
“For ten years in the US, the EPIC model has been groundbreaking in its ability to solve cities’ social and environmental challenges at low costs by creating partnerships between municipalities and local universities. We’re very excited to see it expand across Africa, where one could argue the model will be even more important due to the limited capacity of many municipalities,” says Sean O’Donoghue, Senior Manager of the Climate Protection Branch, eThekwini Municipality, Durban, South Africa.
The EPIC Network is a collection of more than 40 institutions currently implementing the approach, which originated in the University of Oregon in 2010. Network members have completed over 1,200 projects to date, consisting of hundreds of thousands of student hours.
The Chronicle of Higher Education in the US described the EPIC model as “one of higher education’s most successful and comprehensive service-learning programs.”
This first African-led EPIC training workshop, funded and organized by START International, will take place at Durban Botanic Gardens from 3rd – 6th February 2020.
Twenty-two local and national African governments will be represented at the workshop, along with staff from their local universities; the workshop aims to build on the successes of three pilot projects in Durban, Lusaka, Zambia, and the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, and to expand the model across the continent. Trainee pairs from Harare, Zimbabwe, Paynesville, Liberia, Kampala, Uganda and other African cities will attend.
The results from the three African pilots suggests the EPIC model is a promising approach to climate adaptation and disaster management. For example, students from the University of Zambia, partnering with the Lusaka City Council, produced local area plans for water security in the informal settlements of the city. The cost to the city was around USD 45,000, instead of an estimated USD 130,000 – 145,000 professional fee. This motivated Lusaka City Council to start institutionalizing the EPIC model in the council’s operations to address other issues.
The Durban workshop will be the second EPIC training workshop in Africa. The first, led by the EPIC-Network in 2017, inspired the three African pilot projects, and was funded by the US National Science Foundation and UNEP’s Global Adaptation Network.
“The partnership between universities and local governments can be an immensely powerful force in making cities resilient to climate change. In Africa, this is especially vital due to the way in which climate change is threatening millions of livelihoods. We at the Global Adaptation Network are delighted to see one of our partners expand its work with such efficacy and success,” said Lis Bernhardt, Coordinator of UNEP’s Global Adaptation Network.
In addition to the Durban workshop, two other continents will be hosting EPIC training events in the first half of 2020 – a Regional Training Workshop will be held in Bangkok, Thailand, on 24-28 February 2020, and the 9th Annual EPIC-Network Conference will be held in North America in April 2020.
NOTES TO THE EDITOR:
UN Environment Programme
UNEP is the leading global voice on the environment. It provides leadership and encourages partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations
About the EPIC-Network (EPIC-N)
The Educational Partnerships for Innovation in Communities – Network (EPIC-N) connects communities with the human capital of universities to improve the quality of life and social wealth for all involved. EPIC-N is the nonprofit association of institutions that adopt the award-winning EPIC model for university-community partnership. For more information about the EPIC Network, click here.
About the Global Adaptation Network
Founded in 2010, the Global Adaptation Network (GAN) provides a worldwide platform to distribute and exchange climate change adaptation knowledge in a variety of ways. It emphasizes the value of direct personal exchange and partnerships, often within particular regions of vulnerability. The secretariat of GAN is hosted by the UN Environment Programme in Nairobi. For more information about UNEP’s Global Adaptation Network, click here.
About START International
Since 1992, START International has provided opportunities for training, research, education and networking for advancing solutions to critical sustainability challenges in Africa and Asia. At the intersection of science, policy and practice, START programs advance locally- and regionally-driven actionable knowledge. For more information about START International, click here.
