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Students Travel the Globe to Study International Development
Fourteen student teams fanned out across the globe in January on research assignments for SIPA’s Workshop in Development Practice.
From Rio de Janeiro to Borneo, students conducted field research for clients ranging from United Nations agencies to grass-roots organizations.
View a photo gallery from the January assignments. 
The Workshop in Development Practice is a final requirement in SIPA’s Economic and Political Development concentration, and it enables students to work as consultants in their field of interest. Workshop assignments typically deal with projects in international development and the related fields of human rights, corporate social responsibility, humanitarian affairs, public health, or environmental policy.
This year’s assignments included a trip to Chiapas, Mexico, to evaluate an innovative program that rewards students for staying in school. Another group traveled to Kingston, Jamaica to identify economic growth prospects in a downtown that was damaged by gang violence. Another conducted an economic study of a fish market in Senegal.
The projects give students a chance to look closely at the challenges of international development and to apply the skills they have learned at SIPA.
“Workshop teams gain valuable project management and field experience, while also making significant contributions to the work of their client organizations,” said Eugenia McGill, director of the Workshop in Development Practice.
Many client organizations have become repeat customers, benefiting from the work of multiple SIPA teams over the years, McGill added.
About 155 students are enrolled in the workshop this year, and most are traveling internationally for two weeks in January or March.
The results of many of last year's workshop projects are available online.
Tim Shenk, February 6, 2011