From the Executive Director

Happy 2020 to all our friends and partners!

2019 was a busy year for CIRED. We continued to work hard to seek partnerships and external funding in support of Virginia Tech’s global land-grant mission. Our projects drew on the university’s knowledge and applied it through multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional partnerships to raise standards of living in developing countries. Our projects and activities provided opportunities for VT faculty and students to be involved in the research, teaching, and development of innovative solutions to problems beyond our boundaries, resulting in benefits not only to the university, but to the Commonwealth of Virginia, the nation, and the world. We can all feel proud of this work.

CIRED has traditionally been funded by grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), many of which have been agriculture-focused. While this continues, CIRED has recently received grants from new donors, and we continue to look for ways to diversify the project portfolio. This includes working with the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) in Morocco on tourism development and with UNICEF to establish the African Drone and Data Academy.

Partnerships, internal and external, are key to CIRED’s success and the Center strives to develop and strengthen global partnerships in support of Virginia Tech’s international engagement. Global partnerships with other universities, governments, and NGOs, among others, are key to being successful in seeking and obtaining external funding. CIRED continues to expand its partnerships, including with new partners such as EARTH University in Costa Rica, GOPA (a German NGO), FHI 360, Winrock International, and Cambridge Education.

The USAID-funded Integrated Pest Management Innovation Lab (IPM/IL), which CIRED has managed since 1993, recently received an associate award to work on fall armyworm in Nepal . The Center continues to implement the USAID/Senegal Youth in Agriculture Project and the USAID Catalyzing Afghan Agricultural Innovation Project. The USAID InnovATE Armenia Project with the International Center for Agribusiness Research and Education (ICARE) closed out in October 2019. It was a highly successful project, and we are seeking new funding opportunities there, and in the neighboring Republic of Georgia.

As we move into 2020, we will continue to build partnerships and seek funding opportunities that will help Virginia Tech fulfill its Ut Prosim (That I May Serve) mission globally. If you have ideas about how we can do that better and want to work with us doing it, please reach out to me.

Warm regards,

Van Crowder
Executive Director, Center for International Research, Education, and Development (CIRED) Professor, Department of Agricultural, Leadership and Community Education (ALCE)