Final Symposium of Between Lecture Hall and Project Work 2016 – Building bridges between theory and practice

Students from various disciplines took part at the GIZ competition "Between Lecture Hall and Project". It was the initiatives 15th round in 2016. Numerous German universities challenged their students to analyze a GIZ project in teams of two or alone. Using a scientific research question students turned their skills from theory to practice and made recommendations for the GIZ projects accordingly.

Due to BMZ´s digitization strategy the concept of the competition has been adjusted this year. The students used short videos to present their results instead of posters for the first time. Therefore, the participants did not only gain insight into GIZ´s project work but additionally benefited by developing skills on creating concise and visually appealing short videos.

At the final symposium on Friday, July 8, ten pre-selected final teams had the opportunity to present their videos and results to the jury. Jutta Heckel (GIZ Head of Young Professionals Programmes), Birgit Frost (Goethe Institute), Dr. Heike Walk (Freie Universität Berlin, Environmental Policy Research Center) and Janina Peter (Winner 2015) had the challenging task of selecting the three best presentations and rewarding the winners with paid internships in GIZ projects.

Manuel Heckel and Salma Abdelrahman from the master program "Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design" at University of Stuttgart impressed the jury at the final symposium in Berlin with their presentation on "The influence of education on social cohesion- the case of Sri Lanka" and achieved the first place.

Nicole Lee and Bae Sangeun from the master program "Agricultural Sciences in the Tropics and Subtropics" at Hohenheim University were ranked second for their presentation "Bridging the gap: Tailoring conservation agriculture to the Namibian context". Luzmila Rosales and Maria Fiedler from the master program "Global Change Management" at Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development worked with a project dealing with adaptation to climate change in Peru and reached the third place.

A total of 24 GIZ projects were analyzed in 20 partner countries. Watch the films of all the participants of the 15th round of Between Lecture Hall and Project Work here!