About Developing People | The Foundation for Professional Development

Developing people

FPD prides itself on being one of the few private higher educational institutions that fully engages in the three scholarships of higher education, namely: teaching and learning, research and community engagement. These areas of academic scholarship provide the three focus areas of our work. FPD provides a comprehensive curriculum of courses in clinical management and professional skills development that are customised to the needs of students in sectors such as: management, health, education and information technology. Educational products are presented through formal qualifications, postgraduate qualifications, short courses, in-house courses and conferences.

We acknowledge that cost is a major barrier to quality education. FPD therefore actively strives to reduce the financial burden of participants through scholarship programmes. During 2019 - 2020, educational grants and sponsorships to the value of R70 552 046 million were received. The total monetary value of scholarships awarded since 1998 is R721 506 776 million.

Departments

Aligned to FPD’s vision of building a better society through education and capacity development, the FPD Business School focuses on developing transformational leaders. The school boasts an array of management and leadership programmes ranging from short learning programmes, formal qualifications and international management programmes. These management courses cater for all levels of students from entry-level professionals to highly experienced executive management. Our teaching methodologies are based on cutting edge educational processes and include: interactive and engaging online content, tutorial and engagement sessions to support students, case studies, group discussions, structured and unstructured group work and action research. To date FPD Business School has trained over 11 000 students across Sub-Saharan and Eastern Africa in a variety of management related programmes.

For more information, please send an email to: business@foundation.co.za

The School of Education strives to enhance the professional development of educators across the educational spectrum. From early childhood care and education to postgraduate studies, the FPD School of Education offers a wide range of educational courses that incorporates technology enhanced learning. Qualifications and courses are designed to build the professional competencies of an academic.

For more information, please send an email to: education@foundation.co.za

The FPD School of Health Sciences has been the leader in training healthcare professionals for more than 20 years and takes pride in being recognised as the pinnacle product leader and innovator in the healthcare industry. Our research has shown that 54% of all doctors have studied with FPD and continue to do so by earning some of their yearly Continuous Education Units (CEU) points a requirement by the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA). Amidst the COVID pandemic the need for online study material has become evident. Responding to this demand, the School of Health Sciences has developed many online and eLearning products, many of these are clinical courses with COVID content, but others are conventional medical education courses traditionally associated with the school. With the ramifications of the COVID pandemic in mind, there is a strong focus on courses linked to mental health and well-being. In addition to the short courses the school will expand its offering going forward to include more formal qualifications and post graduate diplomas to fill the gap for a wider Southern African and African audience.

For more information, please send an email to: healthscience@foundation.co.za

The Nursing Education Unit’s vision is to be recognized as a leader in innovative nursing training and education to the dynamic and diverse health needs of the population and the nursing profession. The Nursing Education Unit’s aim to develop well-educated and competent nurses and non-professionals in the healthcare environment (including Community Health Workers) to provide quality health services to individuals, families and communities. The Nursing Education Unit also aims to transform the lives of people and communities through innovative training, education and health care. The Nursing education Unit is committed to professionalism, caring for the needs of people and improves healthcare quality.

The Nursing Education Unit is also committed to contribute to and disseminate evidence-based research to improve nursing and health care.

For more information, please send an email to: nursing@foundation.co.za

The FPD School of Information Technology is an active Microsoft Imagine Academy and a Microsoft Global Training Partner. Our speciality is distance/remote, self-paced eLearning via our Azure hosted Learner Management System (LMS). The FPD School of Information Technology offers international vendor certifications, software licencing, and educator services in the Information Technology space. We are a mobile Certiport testing centre with the ability to remotely proctor international vendor certifi cations anywhere in the world. FPD School of IT is also accredited with the MICT SETA.

For more information, please send an email to: itschool@foundation.co.za

The School of Natural Sciences is a newly established school and offers short courses in Research Methodology and in the various disciplines of the natural sciences such as Postgraduate Research Supervision and Scientific Peer Review. These short learning programmes will be endorsed by the South African Council for Natural Scientific Professions (SACNASP) and the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA). The short courses offered may also help the participant in their career path.

For more information, please send an email to: naturalscience@foundation.co.za

The school of Public Health is a newly established school and have enrolled the second cohort in September 2021. The aim of the school is to produce public health professionals that are able to adapt and localise international public health policies with the aim of promoting the population health while taking into consideration the good cultural beliefs and practices of our diverse African nations and communities.

We understand the public health professional are on the frontlines of the health of our communities. FPD seeks to enable you with core public health knowledge and skills to navigate our society’s mixture of cultural, traditional, and modern communities, which require a collaborative approach with communities. We understand that, in addition to learning from our communities, you require formal learning to advise on a route to good health for all that works within their common practices, knowledge, attitudes and perceptions regarding their health and public health system. The School of Public Health aims to enable you as a public health practitioner to readily conduct surveys, action learning, pre-and-post behavioural studies and scientific research that will respond to our societal and community needs and promote targeted good health practices.

The Public Health school offers:

Master of Public Health formal qualification,
Three CPD/CME short learning packages and
Two short courses:
- Introduction to Biostatistics and
- Introduction to Epidemiology.

The school has also identified six more new courses that will be developed during 2022.

For more information, please send an email to: publichealth@foundation.co.za

The SHIPS Department focuses on developing innovative transformation models to transition young people from educational programmes into the workplace through skills development.

The SHIPS Department provides learnership opportunities to learners through training and placement in specific career path opportunities. The FPD SHIPS Department offers several service-learning opportunities to allow participants to gain work-based experience. These programmes accommodate students at various qualification levels; ranging from programmes designed to hone the skills of university graduates by placing them with host organisations where they can enhance their newly acquired skills, to programmes that support formal learnerships and undergraduate service-learning internships. To date FPD has supported over 3 500 learners and interns through their training programmes and placements.

For more information, please send an email to: ships@foundation.co.za

The Foundation for Professional Development (FPD) is an organisation that beliefs in developing people through various endeavours. Conferencing and Event management is an aspect of FPD that has grown over 21 years to make FPD one of the few expert event organisers in South Africa.

FPD is the largest organizer of health-related conferences in South Africa dating back from 2000 when FPD provided the project management capacity to organize the XIII International AIDS Society in South Africa with 13,000 delegates, this conference remains, to date, one of the largest scientific events held in South Africa. FPD annually organizes several national and international conferences including the bi-annual SA AIDS and SA TB Conferences.

As an organisation, FPD understands the context of face-to-face and virtual events and how to provide clients with different options to deliver their event successfully. With COVID-19 changing the world of events completely, FPD is in the unique position to offer virtual, face-to-face and hybrid events of any size.

Through our EventsAir and OnAir platforms, we offer integrated events with exhibition halls, networking hubs and seamless virtual rooms for training and information sharing.

FPD offers a comprehensive in-house event management capacity that is designed to convert our clients brief into a successful event. Planning and management of events including event risk analysis is based on 21 years of event management experience and supported by customised event and project management software. This in-house capacity includes:

Registration management
Logistics management
Speaker management
CPD accreditation management
Venue management
Virtual support
Financial management
Sponsorship management
Exhibition management
Marketing
Graphic design
IT services
Media management services
Web design
Project management

Thanks to the large number of events FPD annually organises it has a comprehensive of database of vetted external suppliers for bags, printing, etc. and the ability to leverage its purchasing power to ensure that clients receive substantial discounts. This support is aimed at ensuring the success of the conference on an operational and strategic level.

FPD has run extensive marketing campaigns for all our past conferences with immense success. Before each conference is launched, a detailed communications plan and framework is developed to optimally promote a conference with the widest possible reach and a high output.

For more information, please send an email to: events@foundation.co.za

The Education Innovation Department (EID) is a support department and delivers a comprehensive, coordinated and integrated academic development service to the Foundation for Professional Development (FPD). EID has the vision to create innovative, evidence based high quality educational programmes in order to position FPD as a leading provider of Higher Education.

The FPD Programme Evaluation Unit is responsible for designing and implementing monitoring and evaluation projects of internal and external donor-funded and commercial programmes. Since its inception in 2015 the Unit has conducted evaluation projects for public and private organisations across Southern Africa on health and social service programmes, focussing mostly on adult education, training, and capacity building interventions.

Our approach to programme evaluation does not follow a “one size fits all” approach but offers monitoring & evaluation services that are customised to our client's needs, using participatory and utilisation-focussed evaluation methods.