Georgetown University is lobbying Congress to extend the Scholarships for Education and Economic Development program into the Andes region of South America, according to publicly disclosed federal documents.

The SEED program, which currently includes the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua, is sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development and administered by the University’s Center for Intercultural Education and Development. The program offers scholarships to students in support of technical training, leadership skills enhancement, and English as a second language studies.

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Ready for some acronyms? The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has awarded Georgetown’s Center for Intercultural Education and Development (CIED) to administer a program that trains students from countries throughout Central America, the Office of Communications reports.

The program, called Scholarships for Education and Economic Development (SEED), will offer students from “Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua” job training, education in development fields such as economics, business, agriculture, health administration, ESL, and education, among other things.

Katie Martha, a University spokesperson, wrote in an email that “The 5 year cooperative agreement is estimated to provide for a little over 1300 students over five years.”

According to the Office of Communication’s press release:

The new program is the successor of CIED and USAID’s Cooperative Association of States for Scholarships (CASS) program, which provided technical and professional training to more than 6,000 low-income and rural students from Central America and the Caribbean.

So in short, USAID gave CIED money for SEED, which used to be CASS. The first group of SEED students will begin training in August.