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EPD Workshop
What is the EPD Workshop?
The Workshop in Development Practice is one of most exciting opportunities within the EPD program. Officially, it is a spring-semester course for second-year master's degree students in the EPD program, but workshop activities begin in the fall semester through the course on Methods for Development Practice. Through the workshop, students gain practical experience by engaging in on-going cutting-edge development efforts, often involving country fieldwork. Working in teams with a faculty supervisor, students assist a variety of clients on a wide array of assignments in international development. Students take a multidisciplinary approach to their work and learn extensively from each other as well as from the hands-on tasks of the workshop itself. Another key strength of the workshop is that it allows students to explore the intersection of development concerns with human rights, corporate social responsibility, humanitarian affairs, public health and environmental policy. In recent years, the workshop has had the pleasure of partnering with the Human Rights concentration and Humanitarian Affairs program at SIPA, the Earth Institute, the Center for Sustainable Urban Development, the Mailman School of Public Health, the Harriman Institute, the Institute for Latin American Studies and the Middle East Institute at Columbia. Reflecting the utility of workshop assignments, a number of our reports are available on client websites and have been published.
Past workshop projects have included:
- Recommendations for microfinance institutions to expand the products and related services they offer to poor clients
- Marketing strategies for products of local artisans and small producers
- Toolkit for planning water and sanitation delivery in refugee camps
- Recommendations for strengthening a program to reintegrate former combatants
- Designing a monitoring and evaluation system for a grassroots organization providing paralegal services in poor rural communities
- Mapping vocational training programs for internally displaced youth in a post-conflict area
- Developing a food security assessment tool for a rural development NGO
- Analyzing opportunities for foreign direct investment, and related constraints, in selected cities
- Assessing business services needed by African immigrant women in New York
Past clients have included UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF and UNIFEM; the World Bank; national and local governments; NGOs such as Catholic Relief Services, FilmAid International, International Institute for Rural Reconstruction, International Rescue Committee, Seva Mandir, Trickle Up, WaterAid, and Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children; and development advisors such as DAI and Technoserve. The precise scope of the workshop project and outputs that the students will deliver are negotiated with each client.
Related Links
Recent Workshop Project Reports by Year: