Police training in Guatemala goes from strength to strength
On 12 July 2012, a data centre linking police stations in Guatemala with the national police training academy (APNC) was officially opened. The opening of the data centre represents a key milestone in the professionalisation of the police service in Guatemala and is one of the core objectives of a NICHE project about Lifelong Learning in Police Practice.
The project, called Seguimiento y Capacitación en la Práctica Policial in Spanish, was requested by the Academia de la Policia Nacional Civil (APNC), Guatemala’s national police training academy. It is being implemented in partnership with a consortium led by Leiden University of Applied Sciences and Guatemala’s Instituto Nacional de Administración Pública. With a budget of € 1.5 million, the project aims to connect police stations within Guatemala with the APNC so that e-learning services can be made available at all levels.
National priority
The creation of a virtual learning platform for the police service will use a variety of educational methods to contribute to the continuing process of police training in Guatemala. The project fits in the broader context of a key national priority to strengthen the professionalisation of the national police service and increase its autonomy.
In this connection, the NICHE project builds on an earlier NICHE project which ran from 2004 to 2009 and succeeded in producing new course content for basic and advanced police training. It ensured that course manuals were available, provided training for the trainers and also established a bodega didáctica, a central repository for teaching materials for theory and practice.
NICHE programme administrator Nancy Alexaki from Nuffic commented: “This project will give a major boost to police training and professionalisation in Guatemala. It will also be important to assess the impact and results of the project after it is finished and to investigate the broader possibilities for virtual learning platforms.”
More information on this project (GTM/045) is available at our webpages on NICHE and the project website www.secap.org.