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Service studies starts education programme in The Great Lakes Region

Collage of two photos. Left: Person in a boat on a lake throwing a net. Right: Mattias Wengelin.
Fishing on Lake Victoria. Photo: Unsplash. Right: Mattias Wengelin. Photo: Cecilia Jönsson Silfversparre, SVT.

In collaboration with Lund University Commissioned Education (LUCE) the department of Service studies offers a new international education programme with start later this spring. Focus is on the region around Lake Victoria in east Africa and prefect Mattias Wengelin, responsible for the programme, hope to share knowledge about sustainable services.

LUCE contacted Mattias Wengelin in his prefect role with the announcement within teh Swedish institute Public Sector Innovation Programme and asked if there was anyone at Service studies who had ideas for a suitable project. Mattias himself became interested in starting up something.

– It’s of a personal interest to me. I have worked with Lake Victoria before from a maritime safety point of view. Now we get to work with the lake from a development and sustainability point of view, says Mattias.

Together with the co-organizer Christer Eldh and LUCE he applied and was informed in February that their project had been accepted. Christer Eldh has previously done research within tourism, small scale entrepreneurship and shipping. They are accompanied by other teachers from the department. The education programme consists of 7 stages with different topics, with contents from for example the masters programme in Sustainable service management. The program is free of charge for the participants.

– This programme is very timely. There is a lot of focus on Afrika, on sustainable development and on The Great Lakes Region. In the programme that starts this year we target Lake Victoria and the surrounding countries. We have a good connection with the university in Uganda. Maybe the other lakes will be the focal point in the future if we provide the programme on more occasions, says Mattias.

The aim of the programme is to provide a basis for improvement and sustainability actions. The applicants should be decision makers within the public sector in the region.

– That way we make sure that those who attend the programme can make some actual difference. Lake Victoria is an under-utilized resource, and at the same time a misused resource, says Mattias.

The lake has an important role in the lives of the people in the region, but it is dying from pollution, severe overfertilization, overfishing and algal blooming.

– We hope that we can help to develop positive and sustainable services through education. Services of the whole spectra: transport, sustainable tourism and recreation that will benefit the locals, says Mattias.

About New Welfare Services – Sustainable Service Design as a driver for regional development: The Great Lakes region

The programme on New Welfare Services focuses on sustainable services for the East Africa Great Lakes Region and aims at highlighting sustainable service design and management as a tool for regional development. It focuses on governance as service, as well as governance as a facilitator for inclusive commercial service design, development, and management. Primarily the programme aims to increase and create more sustainable (social as well as environmental) national and inter-regional cooperation within and between industry-specific actors, where synergies between the respective industry-specific representatives. The programme is provided by the Department of Service Management and Service Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Lund University and Entebbe International University, Uganda for local facilitation and support in collaboration with LUCE, the Department for Commissioned Education at Lund University.

The one-year international education programme starts in May and lasts over the course of one year. In addition to the start-up meeting in Uganda with workshops and introduction seminars the programme consists of seven digital stages and an essay seminar in Uganda as a closure for the programme.

Read more about the programme here (pdf). 

About the Public Sector Innovation Programme

Lund university annually offers international education programmes through the Swedish Institutes Public Sector Innovation Programme. In 2023 four 1-year education programmes starts. The purpose of the programme is to contribute with professional knowledge to innovate the public sector and support the implementation of Agenda 2030 for sustainable development.

Read more about Lund University’s international education programmes here. Here you can also find links to the application.