From Traditional OAS Scholarships to an Innovative Partnerships Scholarship Program

More than 100,000 citizens of the Americas have benefitted from OAS scholarships since the traditional Academic Scholarship Program was launched in 1958. For more than fifty years, the OAS has consistently demonstrated its ability to adapt and deliver programs that offer value to the citizens of the Americas through an array of innovative programs.

The original Scholarship Program offered long-term graduate scholarships. In order to take advantage of the many generous scholarship offers received from observer countries, the OAS Professional Development Scholarship Program was developed in the early 1960s. Today, OAS scholarships are offered for the pursuit of Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD degrees, graduate research leading to a degree, and for professional development and vocational training.

In 2000, the OAS Consortium of Universities was created in an effort to maximize resources. By negotiating tuition waivers and additional scholarship benefits for OAS scholarship recipients with educational institutions in the Americas and with partners in observer States, the OAS was able to significantly increase the number of scholarship recipients over the years. The Consortium now comprises 141 higher education institutions.

Responding to the increased priority given to the incorporation of ICT into the education and human development programs of the OAS, the Educational Portal of the Americas was launched in 2001. The Portal harnesses the value of ICTs to promote the development of human capacities through low-cost, high quality online education.

Continuing to search for ways to make its Scholarship Programs more innovative and sustainable and to devise strategies to supplement and expand its reach, the OAS established the Partnerships Program for Education and Training (PAEC) in 2010. PAEC is a partnership between the OAS, the educational institution and the student that offers increased opportunities for citizens of OAS member States to achieve their personal educational and professional goals, while significantly contributing to the development priorities of their home country.

The partnership has proven beneficial for all parties. For students, PAEC provides increased opportunities to study. For institutions, the Program facilitates the attraction of large numbers of qualified students. For the OAS, it allows us to respond to our mandate to continue to promote human development and a better quality of life for the citizens of the Americas.

For further information on current opportunities available visit: http://www.oas.org/en/scholarships

Testimonial - Dr. Pierre-Michel Fontaine, Haiti “I am very pleased finally to have the opportunity to thank the OAS publicly for its scholarship which enabled me to complete my doctoral studies at the University of Denver's Graduate School of International Studies. Thanks to the valuable training thus received, I was able to acquire the knowledge and skills that made possible a very rewarding career of service to the Americas and the world both in US academia and as a senior UN official in Asia, the Pacific, Europe, and Africa… I am proud to have been able, thanks to the OAS support, to have a real impact on the Americas and the world at large through the students from all parts of the world to whose education I continue to contribute and the refugees, internally displaced persons, and other victims of human rights to the protection and assistance of whom I have contributed in various parts of Asia, the Pacific, the Americas (including Haiti), Europe and Africa.” Dr. Pierre-Michel Fontaine was sponsored by Haiti to study in the U.S.A. in 1962 • Former Director of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human rights in the Democratic Republic of Congo (2001-2003). Former Special Representative for Rwanda, UN Commission on Human Rights

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