Dear Colleagues:

For the past 26 years the Middle East Awards (MEAwards) has played a leading role as the main capacity-building program of the Population Council’s West Asia/North Africa region. After long and thoughtful deliberations with the advisory committee and its partners, the MEAwards Secretariat has decided to move away from past activities that have successfully served their purpose and achieved their intended impact. To this end, the program will no longer provide grants to individual scholars.

Based on changing global and regional conditions as well as new intellectual and academic needs, it is time to consider exciting new ideas for the next stage of regional capacity building. Over the next two years MEAwards will focus on capacity building within specific countries by providing training opportunities; giving awards for research on policy-relevant topics, and organizing short-term study groups and longer-term working groups that concentrate on population studies and related social science subjects.

To redress the unequal distribution of opportunities in the region, MEAwards will work closely with researchers in less-privileged countries to help them catch up with developments in the international knowledge and intellectual scene. The first country that the program will focus on is the Sudan. Through intensive training and research opportunities, Council program staff members plan to create opportunities for Sudanese researchers to interact with and benefit from colleagues in more privileged settings.

The program will continue to support existing working groups. The existing groups focus on issues related to the Arab families, poverty, and the reconstruction of war-torn communities. The Secretariat will also continue to organize topical and timely study groups that will conduct research on critical regional issues. In January 2004 more than 30 Arab researchers met in Tunisia to discuss the current state and the potential of social sciences to affect development in the region, a topic of great significance and relevance at the current juncture.

We are excited about our new plans and look forward to many more years of active engagement in enhancing population studies and social sciences in our region.

Sincerely,

The MEAwards Secretariat
Population Council