© GIZ / Michael von Haugwitz

What is special about the Academy and how does it work?

What is special about the Academy for International Cooperation?

Social change for sustainable development needs capable and accountable people. This is precisely what the GIZ Academy is geared to: Under the motto "Creating prospects together", we strengthen experts and managers in international cooperation. Our offer is aligned with current requirements and trends. For example, you can learn about digitalisation in international cooperation. Or about how you can successfully shape transformation processes with people from different backgrounds and cultures.

The Academy also prepares field staff for their assignments in 120 countries, including security training, country analyses, and training on dealing with complexity and diversity in an international context. The TVET Academy supports the competencies development for labour market-oriented vocational training, which plays an important role in sustainable development in developing, emerging and industrialised countries. 

How do participants benefit from the Academy?

The Academy has decades of experience with learning offers in international cooperation and has an extensive network of excellent trainers. Our participants also benefit from the experience of GIZ. This is because the practical experience of more than 25,000 employees in more than 120 countries flows into our offer. 

What is special about the Academy's learning opportunities?

We pass on more than just knowledge. Alongside sector knowledge, you need strategies for international cooperation that enable you to work successfully with people with different technical, institutional or cultural viewpoints and interests in order to reach common goals. For instance, we prepare the participants for their work in intercultural contexts and in crises, and practice dealing with stressful situations. But our portfolio also covers leadership skills, negotiation and communication.

We always pay attention to the three aspects that together make up people’s competencies: their knowledge, their skills – i.e. their actions – and their attitude. The Academy offers participants the opportunity to reflect on their attitude and develop it as an "inner compass". This has an effect far beyond the training and provides an orientation that they can always rely on, regardless of how varied the demands made of them are.

How do people learn in the Academy?

As practical and individual as possible. Since people learn primarily by working independently and through exchange with colleagues, dialog between participants and learning from each other play an important role. The focus is always placed on the transfer of what has been learned into practice.

We are continuously developing our learning concept, taking into account the changing requirements of the working world. Making meaningful use of the potential of digital learning formats was therefore already central to the Academy in pre-Corona times. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have once again significantly expanded our range of digital learning formats. However, they are now being supplemented by face-to-face formats, whose strengths are unsurpassed in many learning contexts.