WELCOME to the website of the Lib@Web International Training Program.

News : the good and the bad

On June 7th VLIR/UOS has finally informed us that the course can still be organized this year in the period October-December 2013, but with only 8 scholarships and highly reduced budget. This is due to the fact that only part of their budget has been guaranteed by the Belgian government, meaning all their activities have to be somehow slimmed down. Again we are very sorry and this is also the reason why we didn't publish any selection results any earlier, as we were afraid something like this would happen. We hope for some understanding of this difficult situation and we would have preferred by far to see it go in a much more positive and friendly way.
We managed to adjust the program without reducing the duration (3 months) and with limited reduction of lectures, with minimal impact therefore on the quality of the program as much as possible.
In the next days the final selection of scholarships will be made and the applicants involved will be informed first personally by e-mail. We are terribly sorry but applicants who didn't hear from us by the end of this month are not with the 'happy few'. Apologies for such an unfriendly approach to those who were not selected, but we also had and have to severely limit administrative time spent onto the program in view of the budget cuts.
To put this into perspective and give the larger context : Belgium has lowered its budget for international co-operation and development from 0.54% (of Gross National Income) to 0.47%, rather than heading towards the 0.7% to which the country had committed itself years ago. We are not proud of this.

Old news

The selection of 10 scholarships is going to take longer than anticipated, due to (again...) delays with government funding for VLIR/UOS.
For the same reason the course will have to be postponed until October 2013.
Needless to underline how much we are sorry for this, something happening out of our organizational reach anyway, esp. as it has happened the previous 2 years and yet it was not possible to avoid this to happen again. Belgium is a complicated country...

About applications for a new session of Lib@Web in 2013

In spite of still some pending uncertainties, the Interuniversity Steering Committee has cleared the way for the organization of a session in 2013. The application form is now available in the application page ('Admission Criteria'). The following documents will be needed in addition to the application form filled in itself : 

• personal data and 2 passport pictures
• copies (certified) of diploma's
• 2 recommendation letters
• C.V. (study and work experiences, with details on dates and exact descriptions of degrees/positions, transcriptions in case of non-English)
• workplan and motivation (1 or 2 pages of text convincing us that you are the right candidate)
• employer's support letter backing the application

The deadline for submission is end of January 2013. In view of very tight schedules from the sponsor (VLIR/UOS) for further processing the selection process, we cannot be flexible on this deadline, so please make sure the form is sent to us timely.
IMPORTANT : It is yet to be decided in which exact period (of 3 months) the session can be organized. As of this moment, the earlier envisaged period April-June is quite unsure in view of similar problems (budget assignments by the Belgian Federal Government) for the previous 2 years having necessitated postponement to October-December.