development – This Week @ MIIS

Recommendation from MIIS Alumnus Leads to Transformative Internship

Bergthora Gudbergsdottir evag@miis.edu development, Featured, IPS, newsroom August 28, 2014

Michael Lui (MAIPS ’15) on the job at his summer internship working for the nonprofit organization Global Compassion in Cameroon.

For Michael Lui (MAIPS ’15), his summer internship working for the nonprofit organization Global Compassion in Cameroon was a transformative experience that he hopes to continue to build upon as he completes his degree in International Policy Studies, with a certificate in Conflict Resolution. For two and a half months Michael worked in the rural municipality of Santchou working on a grant proposal to implement a water project. His work involved researching existing wells and water taps, meeting with stakeholders, consulting with water experts and lots of writing.

The internship was exactly the missing piece Michael had been searching for. “I have always been amazed at the breadth of experience many of my fellow students bring to the class,” he shares, adding that he is a “California boy” who is really interested in conflict resolution as it relates to development issues, but before this summer had no experience working in a developing country. “It changes everything,” he says. Despite having studied poverty, development and conflict case studies for many years, he now says he finally understands what issues such as lack of access to potable water really mean.

Michael learned about the internship opportunity through the Center for Advising and Career Services. They in turn heard about it from recent alumnus Mohammed Makhlouf (MAIPS ’13), who had encouraged the president of Global Compassion to hire MIIS students and notified CACS staff of the position. Mohammed is a part of the very active international Monterey Institute alumni network.

Back in Monterey, where he has just started his third semester of studies, Michael has plans to build on his Cameroon experience as part of his class projects. His language of study is French, and during his time in Cameroon he says he was able to greatly improve his language skills. “Being able to talk to people in French really helped me a lot in my job because I was able to communicate directly and establish rapport with people.” Michael admits the experience was not without its challenges, but he learned a lot about himself and the field to which he aspires. “My main take away,” he says earnestly, is that “the world is full of opportunities and we have the ability to make a big difference if we do things right.”

MIIS Launches New Center on Social Impact Learning with Funding from Cordes Foundation

Anne-Marie Steiger asteiger@miis.edu Business, development, Featured, FMS, MBA, newsroom, research May 12, 2014

Frontier Market Scouts participant Whitney Hales (MBA/MAIEP ’14, right) with cacao farmers in Belize, where she worked in summer 2013 as part of the Maya Mountain Cacao project.

On May 12, the Monterey Institute announced the establishment of a new Center for Social Impact Learning (CSIL), which will bring three existing programs together under a single umbrella:

The Institute’s Frontier Market Scouts program, which provides graduate students from MIIS and other schools, as well as mid-career international professionals, with an intensive two-week training program followed by a six-month internship designed to prepare them for careers in impact investing and social venture management;
The Ambassador Corps, which will provide undergraduate students at Middlebury College and other schools with ten-week in-field learning experiences in development and business in underdeveloped and emerging economies; and
The Development Consulting Program, which will engage MIIS students as team members on projects initiated by some of the most reputable consulting firms to provide pro-bono consulting services to nonprofit organizations.

The latter two programs were created by the new center’s director, Jerry Hildebrand, who most recently headed the Global Center for Social Entrepreneurship at the University of the Pacific. Hildebrand was previously the CEO for 17 years of Katalysis Bootstrap Fund, a microfinance organization that provides training, technical assistance, and credit to non-governmental microfinance institutions in Central America. His decades of work in grassroots economic development began in Peru, where he served as one of pioneering Peace Corps volunteers in the early 1960s.

“The opportunity to create a groundbreaking Center for Social Impact Learning at MIIS is truly an enviable task,” said Hildebrand. “The MIIS faculty have already laid the foundation of a rigorous academic program, to which we will add a compelling and innovative experiential learning component. Students will be equipped with a practical problem-solving skill set that will be field tested throughout the developing world.”

The new center plans to develop an active research program on management issues in social venture and impact investing, leveraging existing experiential and professional learning programs. Managing the research program and the academic programming for CSIL is Dr. Yuwei Shi, dean of Graduate School of International Policy and Management at MIIS, who also founded the Frontier Market Scouts program. CSIL also expects to collaborate closely with Middlebury College’s Center for Social Entrepreneurship (CSE), which integrates social entrepreneurship and liberal arts education. According to economics professor Jonathan Isham, the CSE’s faculty director, “MIIS and Middlebury College students should celebrate this grand news. Jerry Hildebrand is one of the true leaders in social entrepreneurship education. My CSE colleagues and I look forward to building opportunities with Jerry and Yuwei, on behalf of students on both coasts.”

“This new venture is unique among the many social entrepreneurship programs in existence today,” noted Monterey Institute President Sunder Ramaswamy, “in that it is designed to serve the full spectrum of budding social entrepreneurs, from undergraduates to graduate students to young professionals. CSIL will offer them not only valuable learning experiences but also seamless transitions from one stage of professional development to the next as they prepare for careers in the social impact investing field.”

The Center for Social Impact Learning will be supported by a generous grant from the Cordes Foundation. The Cordes Foundation was created in 2006 by Ron and Marty Cordes following the sale of Ron’s company, AssetMark Investment Services. One of the major focuses of the foundation’s philanthropy continues to be supporting social entrepreneurship education. The foundation also funds the Cordes Innovation Awards given each year by Ashoka U; the Monterey Institute’s Frontier Market Scouts program won a Cordes award in 2013, and Middlebury’s MiddCORE program was a winner in 2014.

“We are excited to be a seed funder of this groundbreaking new initiative, which aligns our mission with the commitment of MIIS and Middlebury to equip the next generation of leaders in social entrepreneurship,” said Ron Cordes.

The center will formally launch at MIIS effective July 1, with related academic programming beginning in fall 2014.

Immersive Learning Programs Send 36 Students Off to Assignments

Bergthora Gudbergsdottir evag@miis.edu development, DPMI, Featured, IPSS, newsroom March 25, 2014

Emily Patrick’s (MPA ’12) DPMI Plus assignment took her to Namibia.

This spring, 36 students are heading off to assignments with a diverse range of domestic and international organizations all over the world–including in the U.S.–as part of the International Professional Service Semester (IPSS) and Development Project Management Institute Plus (DPMI Plus) programs. The students will gain professional experience and the opportunity to test many of the theories and lessons from the classroom in the field as part of their master’s degree program.

Among the organizations students will be working at for the next three to six months are the United Nations, the Nature Conservancy, the International Labour Organization, the World Bank, and the National Renewable Energy Lab. Students’ assignments take them all over the world to places like Jordan, Tanzania, Colorado, Costa Rica, Washington D.C. and Bangkok. IPSS and DPMI Plus are among the more established immersive learning opportunities offered to Monterey Institute students and both have impressive records of students leaving their internships with solid job offers.

The Development Project Management Institute also offers intensive summer professional training programs, in Monterey May 19-June 6 and in Washington D.C. May 26-June 13.

MIIS Student Wins Projects for Peace Fellowship for Cholera Prevention Project in Haiti

Anne-Marie Steiger asteiger@miis.edu development, Featured, Fellowships, internships, IPS, newsroom, social_change March 19, 2014

Wesley Laine (MAIPS ’14) holding one of the beneficiaries of his innovative water project.

Monterey Institute student Wesley Laine (MAIPS ’14) will receive $10,000 in funding for his Cholera prevention project in Haiti through the prestigious Projects for Peace fellowship. “I am really grateful to MIIS and the Kathryn Davis Foundation for believing in my project — Cholera Prevention: Service, Solidarity, and Peace,” says Wesley. The foundation’s Projects for Peace initiative encourages students at the Davis United World College Scholars Program partner schools to design grassroots projects that promote peace and address the root causes of conflict among parties. The fellowship is funded by the Davis family in honor of Kathryn W. Davis, a lifetime internationalist and philanthropist, who died last year at the age of 106. She founded the program when she turned 100 years old, challenging young leaders to “bring about a mind-set of preparing for peace, instead of preparing for war.”

Wesley is very passionate about his bottom-up approach to form a real partnership with people in rural Haiti to improve hygiene with the aim of preventing waterborne pathogens, especially cholera. His work has been featured at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting (see news story from October 2013). He likens the project to a marathon and says: “I am in it until the end. That is my promise to my compatriots in Haiti.”

Applicants for Projects for Peace fellowships are encouraged to use their creativity to design projects and employ innovative techniques for engaging project participants in ways that focus on conflict resolution, reconciliation, building understanding and breaking down barriers which cause conflict, and finding solutions for resolving conflicts and maintaining peace. Wesley has designed his project to “empower the individual agency with a focus on establishing a preferential option for the poor.” He is very happy with the many professional growth opportunities he has been provided with through his studies at the Monterey Institute, including a semester in Paris with Middlebury Schools Abroad and Development Project Management Institute intensive training program in Rwanda this January.

MIIS Team Reaches Finals of Regional Hult Prize Competition, Makes Key Connections

Anne-Marie Steiger asteiger@miis.edu development, DPMI, Featured, FMS, IPS, MPA, newsroom, social_change March 14, 2014

From left: Maria Kovell (MPA ‘14), Amitay Flores (IPS ‘14), Amanda Boyek (IPS ‘14), Natalie Cox (MPA ‘14), Amy Ross (MPA ‘14)

A team of Monterey Institute students—Maria Kovell (MPA ‘14), Amitay Flores (MAIPS ‘14), Amanda Boyek (MAIPS ‘14), Natalie Cox (MPA ‘14), and Amy Ross (MPA ‘14)—made their mark at the Hult Prize regional competition last weekend in San Francisco, and left the competition with something at least as good as a win: a path forward for their innovative project.

The team first beat hundreds of competitors to win a place in the 2014 Hult Prize Regional Finals in San Francisco, then proceeded to wow the judges there, who selected them as one of four teams (out of 47) to advance to the final round of the regional competition. The other three finalists came from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Hult International Business School in San Francisco, and the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

The 2014 Hult Prize Challenge, a collaboration with the Clinton Global Initiative, was to design a sustainable business model addressing non-communicable disease in urban slums. Executives from Intel, IDEO, Google.org, EMC and Matternet were represented on the judging panel that supported the Monterey Institute team and voted them into the final round. The team was encouraged by the reception their idea received and plan to move their venture, Salud2, forward after graduation in May with a pilot in Mexico. They will be meeting with people from some of the organizations they connected with at the competition and are also exploring options with MIIS faculty and staff.

“It was an energizing experience for us. MIIS coursework and programs like the Frontier Market Scouts (FMS) and the Development Project Management Institute (DPMI) opened our minds and pushed our thinking to the level required to tackle today’s most complex problems,” says Amy Ross. The team sincerely thanks the MIIS faculty that supported them along the way and would like to congratulate the MIT team that moved forward from the San Francisco Regional Finals and will present their venture at the Clinton Global Initiative in September.

Student’s Team El Salvador Experience “Connected the Dots…Now I Have More to Offer”

Anne-Marie Steiger asteiger@miis.edu careers, development, Featured, MPA, newsroom February 25, 2014

Team El Salvador in transit between Monterey and Bajo Lempa.

Since its inception in 2006, Team El Salvador has provided 105 Monterey Institute students with the opportunity to hone their development and language skills while making a meaningful contribution to the lives of people in the Bajo Lempa region of El Salvador. This January, nine MIIS students were joined by two Middlebury students and, for the first time, a student from California State University, Monterey Bay.

Faculty director Adele Negro is the glue that keeps Team El Salvador together, but each year the leadership of projects is in the hands of students. The student-driven leadership model is, according to Negro, a key component of the program’s effectiveness. Another important factor is the consistency and longstanding partnership that has been developed and nurtured over the years with the two community partner organizations in El Salvador, la Coordinadora and the Mangrove Association.

This year, the students worked on four major projects:

The “PLAS” Project, to help improve the functionality and implementation of the Local Sustainable Resource Utilization Plan.
The Microcredit Project, to strengthen the administrative system of the NGO’s microcredit program under a new profit-based organization in order to improve its sustainability.
The Public Spaces Project, to assess community perception and utilization of spaces and structures so as to answer the question: ”What makes for a strong, healthy, cohesive community?”
A Photojournalism Project, to capture in visual and narrative forms the history, experiences and people characterizing the evolution of an eight-year relationship developed between Team El Salvador and its partners.

Many Monterey Institute alumni have spoken about the transformative effect their Team El Salvador participation has had on their studies and careers. Lauren Lambert (MAIEP ’15) appears to have a similarly meaningful experience: “While I have lived abroad on and off throughout my entire life, the three weeks I spent working in El Salvador contextualized what I am doing here at MIIS in a way that nothing else could have.” It “connected the dots,” and clarified how she can make the most of her time at MIIS, so that when she leaves she can have a more profound impact on what she sees as our shared “project human” – to leave this world a better place than when we arrived.

Student Teams Compete in MIIS Water Innovation Challenge

Anne-Marie Steiger asteiger@miis.edu development, Featured, internships, MPA, newsroom, social_change February 22, 2014

Participants in this spring’s water innovation challenge gather in the Digital Learning Commons’ Design Space to work on this wicked problem.

As our motto, to “be the solution,” indicates, a Monterey Institute degree involves much more than classroom theory. Monterey Institute students have numerous opportunities via immersive learning experiences to develop their professional skills by completing fieldwork and working on real-life issues as part of their class assignments. This spring semester, a group of faculty and staff from across the Institute has launched an innovation challenge for teams of students willing to tackle a true wicked problem.

The challenge, Nor Any Drop to Drink? – Securing the Future of Monterey County’s Fresh Water Supply, involves participating in a series of stakeholder conversations and workshops and working with teams to come up with solutions to a problem that is at once very local and yet global in its wickedness. As Professor Kent Glenzer of the Development Practice and Policy program says, it serves three main purposes: “First, it promotes interdisciplinary work among students, and stretches them to look across degree silos. Complex problems don’t lend themselves to single-discipline solutions. Second, it gives students a real-world laboratory for trying out what they are learning in the classroom. And third, it allows students to engage with local stakeholders – the powerful and the excluded – and forces them to find solutions that are acceptable by many. And it’s a great networking opportunity to boot!”

Ten teams have risen to the challenge and started to interact with stakeholders and experts. They have been tasked with coming up with ideas that are:

sustainable across future generations
progessive regarding economic growth
affordable,
socially,economically and politically just, and
compelling to local stakeholders

A panel of external judges will select winners in late April. The team with the idea deemed best by the judges will receive a monetary award of $2,500.

Class Transforms MIIS Student’s Concept of International Development, Opens Up Career Opportunities

Anne-Marie Steiger asteiger@miis.edu abroad, development, dream-career, FMS, IPS, newsroom February 21, 2014

Xiao’ou Zhu (MAIPS ’14) in Sri Lanka on her Frontier Market Scouts field assignment.

Xiao’ou Zhu (MAIPS ’14) says she has always been interested in international development work, but that she had a very narrow view of what that meant until she came to the Monterey Institute. Her view before could best be described as a “brick and mortar” view of development involving official development assistance (ODA) and infrastructure support. That all changed when she took Professor Nukhet Kardam’s Development Theory and Practice class; “it opened a window into the possibilities of international development,” says Xiao’ou.

“For me the most interesting lessons were connected to sustainability and the importance of community involvement,” says Xiao’ou, who along with two other students from the Development Practice and Policy program, Sarah White (MAIPS ’13) and Abdul Khabir Mirzakhail (MPA ’14), worked on a proposal for a small-scale irrigation project in Ethiopia for a non-governmental organization. “It was a perfect team,” Xiao’ou says happily, explaining that they each brought different expertise and experience to a project they all believed to be applicable to their future careers.

More recently, when Xiao’ou applied for a very competitive internship at the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture, she included their paper as a sample of her work. “I was thrilled when they contacted me and said they were very impressed with the paper!” She was offered a management role in a World Bank agriculture project in China but could not accept, as it would have meant a six-month commitment and she wanted to complete her studies at MIIS. Instead, she decided to join the Frontier Market Scouts program and work on a summer project in Sri Lanka.

Xiao’ou’s decision to decline the internship surprised officials in the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture, but they continued to be interested in her work and contracted her to work on a research project for them while in Sri Lanka. “So I ended up with two simultaneous internships!” Xiao says, adding that she is working on the deliverables for the ministry as part of a directed study with Professor Wei Liang.

Peru Practicum: Breaking Down Barriers Between Classroom and Real-World Development

Anne-Marie Steiger asteiger@miis.edu Alumni, development, Featured, IPS, MPA, newsroom, research February 21, 2014

Aaron Ebner (center, MPA ’11), co-founder of the Andean Alliance for Sustainable Development, with MIIS students in Peru

Five MIIS professors took an introductory policy analysis course and turned it into an optional year-long immersive learning opportunity. Students have the option to enroll in a Peru-focused policy class in the fall, design a research project, conduct in-field research as part of a winter-term practicum in Peru, and then follow up by working with the information and data collected as part of a seminar in the spring, all while they are learning the tools of data analysis.

Linking faculty research, alumni activities, and students’ desire for practical learning experiences, this is a true MIIS community collaboration. It started with Professors Robert McCleery and Philip Murphy, who have been working on research on the links between poverty and isolation, and grew through connections with the Andean Alliance for Sustainable Development, a non-profit co-founded by alumni Aaron Ebner (MPA ’11) and Adam Stieglitz (MPA ’11) that is working on community development projects in the isolated Sacred Valley of Peru.

Professor Jeff Dayton-Johnson and his team of 25 International Policy Studies, Master of Public Administration, Master of Business Administration and International Education Management students looked at several dimensions of connectivity as it relates to a poor rural economy like that of Andean Peru. That included roads, telecommunications, connectivity to public services like health care and education, and connectivity via language (while the national language of Peru is Spanish, Quechua is the language spoken by most of the people in the study area).

Five students—Mario Guzmán-Soria, Josefina Lara, Luz Vázquez Ramos, Ximena Ospina, and Rafael Hernández—presented a preliminary report on major themes and initial findings to local authorities in Calca before returning to Monterey. Says Professor Dayton-Johnson about the experience: “This student-organized and delivered presentation in Calca effectively breaks down the barriers between the classroom and the real world of development practice. Our students took advantage of this opportunity to share initial findings from a field research project they had designed and carried out, to respond to policy makers’ questions, and to strengthen the relationship between MIIS and this region of Peru. I’m very proud of them and look forward to building on their work with another group of students next J-Term!”

MIIS Students Advance to Regional Finals for Million-Dollar Hult Prize for Social Benefit Ventures

Anne-Marie Steiger asteiger@miis.edu development, Featured, IEP, MPA, newsroom, social_change February 3, 2014

Hult Prize competition teammates Natalie Cox, Amitay Flores, Maria Kovell, and Amy Ross.

The Hult Prize is described as “the world’s largest student competition and start-up platform for social good.” This year, more than 10,000 teams from 350 universities in 150 countries sent in proposals focusing on the 250 million slum dwellers suffering from chronic diseases. In January, a team consisting of five MIIS students in the Development Practice and Policy programs, Amanda Boyek (MAIPS ’14), Natalie Cox (MPA ’14), Amitay Flores (MAIPS ’14), Maria Kovell (MPA ’14), and Amy Ross (MPA ’14) got word that they had advanced to the regional finals in San Francisco.

The MIIS team’s proposal is centered around improving youth nutrition and they are now hard at work preparing for the next stage which will take place on March 7 and 8 in San Francisco. “The Hult Prize competition is a unique opportunity to fully develop our ideas into a feasible plan for action,” says Natalie Cox, “and also a chance to see perspectives from students around the world.” Other regional finals will be held in Boston, London, Dubai, Shanghai and Sao Paulo at the same time. One winning team from each host city will move into a summer business incubator, with the final round hosted by the Clinton Global Initiative at its annual meeting in September of this year.

“We are very proud of the Monterey Institute team,” says President Sunder Ramaswamy. “The Hult Prize competition challenges them to put into practice many of the concepts and techniques they have been learning here, and we are delighted to have them represent MIIS in the regional finals.”