Original by ISH RAMAUTARSING

As most people know, the economic climate in Suriname is rather bleak, to say the least. It’s extremely painful to see this happen to your home country, especially one with so much potential. Many people are struggling to make ends meet and small business owners and restaurants are going bankrupt. In short: things don’t look good and there’s no end in sight.

This economic malaise is also affecting Anton de Kom University of Suriname (AdeKUS), the country’s only university. There’s just enough money to pay the professors and that’s about it. As a result, the accreditation process for the Mechanical Engineering bachelor’s program has ground to a halt. The Faculty of Applied Sciences at AdeKUS has been working on this process for some time now. And while the application has since been approved, there’s simply not enough money to complete the process. This is extremely disappointing, especially considering that mechanical engineering is an excellent transition to a master’s program at one of the technical universities in the Netherlands, such as those offered in Delft, Twente and Eindhoven. But the first step, of course, is getting accredited!

The SSA wants to make higher education more accessible to Surinamese students; after all, it’s good for them and it’s good for the future of our country. We therefore launched a crowdfunding campaign earlier this month to raise €13,000 to complete the accreditation process for the Mechanical Engineering program. Our target is €10,000, but our ultimate goal is to raise enough money to solve this problem for good!

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