CLEO helps deliver Sustainable Development Goals focused ENGINE Programme

In July 2020 the Centre for Leadership, Ethics and Organisation, QMS joined together with colleagues from the Centre for Public Health QUB to bid for a major international project exploring vision care as a driver of development across the life course.

The new research programme received £3.5 million in funding from Wellcome and Chen Yet-Sen Family Foundation. ENGINE comprises a four-country suite of trials examining the impact of glasses on promoting better living from childhood through to old age. The project examines how an affordable, effective and widely-available treatment, glasses, can help achieve the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals across the life course in the following ways:

• Reduce road traffic injuries, the world’s leading cause of death in children and young people.
• Enhance learning among the millions of African children with long-sightedness, present at higher rates in Africa than in any other global region.
• Slow the onset of cognitive decline and dementia among elderly persons struggling with poor sight. Proven preventive strategies for cognitive decline and dementia are desperately needed and could reduce incidence by an estimated 41%.
• Improve economic independence by helping older people use online banking on smartphones, as currently two-thirds of adults in Bangladesh are excluded from financial services. 

Part of the projects includes the provision of a capacity-building Post Graduate certificate, delivered virtually through CLEO to selected project leads associated with the 29 partner organizations internationally. The programme content reflects both the content of the grant bid and significant developmental discussions with the 29 project partners. The programme has been designed to complement and, in some cases, draw on modules which already exist with QMS’s portfolio of academic programmes, including its existing MSc in Leadership and Management. The PG Cert modules include ‘Leading in Context’, ‘Governance and Ethics’, ‘Finance for non-Financial Managers’ and ‘Project Management’.

CLEO members are also involved in the supervision of project research students and in the development of policy impact arising from the project as a whole.

You can see further details about the ENGINE programme here.