Summer Internship Series #11

Our eleventh internship post comes from Carmen, MPP accelerated 2014.

Last summer I was able to study children – their ferociousness when you gave all four boys Nerf guns, their excitement when it was time for a “top down” convertible ride, and their agitation when you herded them all to a museum (had to please Mom at least once).

This summer I also was able to study children, albeit in a much different vein. I chose to intern at the Jacksonville Public Education Fund in Jacksonville, FL. The Jacksonville Public Education Fund, known as JPEF, is a seven year old nonprofit dedicated to creating universally high-quality public schools in Duval County. The core components of JPEF are advocacy, community mobilization, and research. Even in their fledgling years, JPEF has made huge waves. In fact, one of our researchers Jason Rose was asked to attend a conference in Tallahassee this summer to help the State Board of Education work on a new state grading policy. JPEF was also heavily involved in educating Duval County citizens in the superintendent selection process this past year.

My role was under Advocacy & Communications as a policy writer. I spent most of the summer researching and working on advocacy campaigns. I learned best methods for a nonprofit to approach advocacy, as well as specific legal rights a 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(h) had in lobbying. Throughout the internship I drafted an official advocacy framework, which I presented to the Board at the closure of my stint. We hosted an educational pep rally for all of Duval County in conjunction with WJCT and the mayor’s office. I also attended local conferences such as the Nonprofit Center’s Community Excellence series. In addition, I was asked to lead a Design Thinking seminar for the staff. After the lecture I directed a lab with all the team members recreating the office space in order to prepare for the seven new staff members joining this fall.

The staff camaraderie at JPEF was my favorite part of the entire experience. I’ve worked in small nonprofit settings before, but was thrilled to see how seamlessly these coworkers cooperated. We rung in my 22nd birthday one Friday with an obnoxious pink cake (also stuffed with fruit. All my choosing) and the whole team wore birthday hats and sung. We closed each team meeting by playing “Pass the Pig,” a die game where the 1st place winner received a golden pig to display at their desk all week, while the 2nd place winner got a mutilated pig holding a sword (these people have my kind of humor for sure).

This experience meant so much to me because I got to meet people who benefited from our policy work. I was able to hug children that now had better educational opportunities and were excited to head back this August. I was able to meet parents and teachers, and see the difference our work was having on the community.

Sometimes the broad umbrella of “policy” can seem heavy and overwhelming. It’s often hard to convey and carries an air of seriousness. But really, we’re all here at Batten just trying to make the world a little bit better, a little bit brighter.

Summer Internship Series #10

Our tenth (!) internship post comes from Elena Weissmann, MPP accelerated 2014.

As it starts to dawn on me that I will be returning to Charlottesville in two weeks, I’ve entered the reflective end-of-summer stage and begin scrambling for that one nugget of a fun fact so quirkily characteristic of my job that I will overuse in icebreakers at the beginning of the semester. I spent the last 8 weeks working as a Mayoral Fellow at the City of Chicago Mayor’s Office, learning to navigate the world of public service and Midwestern accents.

My 25 fellow fellows and I are each working on four to five projects with various City departments, putting our graduate degrees to good use. I am working primarily with the Chicago Department of Transportation, the Department of Finance, a new Cradle-to-Career initiative, the Department of Procurement Services, and the Public Safety Action Committee. Working with such a wide range of commissioners and other department workers has exposed me not only to the intricacies of responsibility taken on by each department, but also the enormous degree of coordination required to make Chicago run. Every program or initiative requires the approval and input of more stakeholders than I could have ever imagined, a process which can take a frustratingly long time but is incredibly valuable and necessary for governance on any scale.

There are no quiet days in the Fellows’ “Thinktank” office, and our weekdays are interspersed with tours and lectures with City officials. We heard from the Police and Fire Commissioners, the City CFO, the Treasurer, the Board of Ethics Commissioner, and countless others. Though visits from Mayor Emanuel himself are rare, we had a roundtable discussion with him for a few hours, and were also invited to see his favorite photos and memorabilia in his office (and discuss tastes in music with him). Each of our visitors spoke with candor and sincerity, and always made sure to include a little life lesson. Several of the most impactful quotes came from Mayor Emanuel, who shared some of his most intense “failure, and I mean FAILURE” stories with us to remind us to “dig deep down and find anything to help you succeed, or even just put your left foot in front of your right foot,” and left us with the order “don’t get to think-y. Remember these are real people whose lives you are impacting.” Duly noted.

Some tour highlights include driving a police car and handling police weapons at the Police Training Academy, standing next to a 757 airplane taking off at O’Hare, learning about Chicago history and architecture on a riverboat tour, watching 95% of American drinking water become purified at the water treatment plant, seeing 9-11 switchboards in action, and some behind-the-scene looks at Chicago landmarks like the Lyric Opera and the Millennium Park bean.

To the Batten faculty and administration, rest assured that I also do actual work as a Mayoral Fellow. For the first half of the job, I spent most of my time refining a pilot program to reform the City’s loading zones (the spaces reserved for commercial loading and unloading in front of businesses), and creating an implementation plan for a “Green Procurement” program set to launch this year. I have drafted memos, conducted best practice interviews, created data reports on Excel and ArcGIS, and of course created many of the ubiquitous intern PowerPoint decks (which I’ve learned are never presented on screen, only printed).

More recently, I’ve spent a lot of time working with census data and mapping demographic changes wrought through a recent ward redistricting process.  I also began working with the Department of Finance under the CFO on two public-private partnership projects, which is exciting for many reasons but most noticeably because she keeps a large candy bowl of Peanut M&M’s on her desk.

During my time here, I’ve had the opportunity to sit down and chat with commissioners, lawyers, assistants, and other public servants from all walks of life and hear about life in government. I’ve learned about how sheer motivation and optimism can change policy and countless lives, and how devoting oneself to a life of public service is at once the most rewarding and most challenging process a person could ever undertake.

This summer has been incredible for so many reasons, and I’m still struggling to narrow down my experience into that one elusive “fun fact.” I’m tempted to go with an obscure fact about loading zones (a subject that sounds so mundane and technical that my friends struggle to understand how I can spend hours rambling excitedly about its reform), or our favorite Frankism of “Policy is everywhere. Lead from anywhere.”

But I think my most valuable lesson of the summer has been the need to internalize the dueling factors of accountability and humility. A line spoken to us by the Mayor and reflected in many of our commissioner talks summed it up nicely: a good leader surrounds herself with other leaders who are empowered enough to take a risk using their best judgment, and humble enough to remain accountable throughout. Such quips alone have taught me more than I could ever learn as a mere Moleskine-wielding, Starbucks-frequenting, Mayor’s-Office-basketball-team-playing graduate fellow. Thanks, Frank!

Summer Internship Series #9

Our ninth internship post comes from Alex, MPP post grad 2014.

Working toward a commonwealth of opportunity in RVA

The Patrick Henry Building lies northeast of the Virginia State Capitol. Named after the first Governor of Virginia and ardent opponent of stamped paper, it houses the Office of the Governor and my desk for the summer (natural light courtesy of other offices).

This summer I had the opportunity to be a Fellow in the Policy Office of Governor Bob McDonnell, 71st Governor of Virginia.  The Policy Office, very much in keeping with its name, is the place where the Governor’s policy agenda is developed. The policy staff consists of counselors, policy advisors and legislative liaisons.  They write, research, support and push through every bill and initiative on the Governor’s agenda.  Part of the executive branch is also the Governor’s Cabinet, which includes the Chief of Staff, the Lieutenant Governor as Chief Jobs Creation Officer, the Senior Policy Advisor and twelve Secretaries.

During the summer, the Policy Office prepares for the next legislative session by creating policy and building stakeholder support. However, because this is the last year of the administration and because Virginia prides itself with its ancient and invincible one-term rule, things were different this summer.  The policy staff worked mostly on implementing and popularizing some initiatives, while building stronger foundations for ones that they hope will survive into the next administration.  Education reform has been a campaign promise and a significant part of the Governor’s policy agenda.  One of my assignments has been to research trends in education reform and possible speakers for the Governor’s K-12 Education Reform Summit. The summit is meant to open up discussion about education reform and how it will look in the Commonwealth.

My memo writing skills were not put to rest with education reform. They went on to a bright career in detailing Social Impact Bonds and planning a social entrepreneurship conference. I will give you a moment to process and enjoy the super relevant translation of a certain PPOL course to real life. Here’s to keeping it real, Batten!

Now that I’ve allotted an appropriate amount of blog space to substantial work, I can finally talk about my favorite indulgence duty in the policy office: ceremonial bill signings. Ceremonial bill signings are held for bills that are seen as a triumph for the Administration. Signings bring together legislators, secretariats and constituents, for inspirational speeches of obstacles overcome and better futures. Now, I love ceremonies as much as the next girl (actually, probably more), but there is a lot of unglamorous work that goes into these bill signings. They start with hopeless hour-long traffic jams (detailed traffic information from the Governor’s security detail and state police got us through these difficult times), continue with running in stilettos on gravel, waiting in parking lots in black suits, texting descriptions of arriving legislators, being mistaken for a brave, future TFA teacher and documenting everything on your cellphone. But all is well that ends well, especially when the largest American flag in Virginia is gently waving on the horizon.

I would not be doing the fellowship justice, if I did not mention the many fellowship accouterments that went beyond our daily office related work.  There was the Governor’s Bowl Fundraiser for the Food Bank, complete with hundreds of doughnuts, pumpkin baked goods, free bagels from Cupertino’s and office small talk.  This noble endeavor was accompanied by actual volunteering at the Food Bank (average egg peeling speed: 3.5/minute). There were also trips to DC to meet the Virginia delegation and to Hampton Roads to ride yachts test boat motors. There were BobTalks, the more casual, cooler cousin of TedTalks.  There was the great debate. There was the visit to the prison. The crowning jewel was the policy project, a mini IPA if you will, (can you tell the program director went to Batten?) which set to solve the most dire of problems in Virginia: the promotion of the craft beer industry.  In terms of economic development, agricultural products and developing a new Virginia staple, craft beer has a lot of untapped potential. So next time you find yourself at a bar, hop to it and order some Virginia craft beer! I will stop PUNishing you now and leave you with a list of other things I have learned over the summer in Richmond:

• The Governor’s Office is brought to you by cupcakes, doughnuts and Dr. Pepper.

• The Patrick Henry Building is in a coffee shop desert.

• Heels (all.day.every.day).

• RVA is a m.A.A.d city.

• Your fellow Fellows always have your back.

• Jackson Ward is the finest National Historic Landmark District in all the land!

• Spotted: Rob Lowe filming ‘Killing Kennedy’.

• The rewards of public service are endless!

Summer Internship Series #8

Our fifth internship post comes from Jeremy, MPP accelerated 2014.

This summer I am an intern at the Asia-Pacific desk of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of International Affairs.  Air traffic control is the division of FAA that has received the most attention lately, but is only part of what FAA does.  FAA certifies new aircraft designs, licenses pilots, regulates aircraft emissions standards, plays a role in National Transportation Safety Board investigations, represents the US with foreign civil aviation authorities, conferences, and regulatory bodies, administers airports, provides air traffic control services, and so much more.  The Office of Policy, International Affairs, and the Environment (API) coordinates FAA’s different department’s international efforts to represent FAA to the world.  API is divided into five regional offices: Western Hemisphere; Europe, the Middle East, Africa; and Asia-Pacific.

My main responsibility is to support the six permanent employees in their preparations for the triennial International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Assembly, where civil aviation authorities from around the world come together to discuss and potentially set international aviation policy.  The meeting is a culmination of dozens of subgroup meetings in the three years between Assemblies. Because of its broad membership, ICAO’s 18 Annexes form the basis of international aviation relations.  ICAO is a specialized agency of the UN, and 190 states are members.

I have been meeting with foreign delegations, translating newspaper and policy documents, conducting open source analysis on aviation matters, and producing background information for the Assembly.  Outside of my formal duties, one of the best aspects of this internship has been the respect with which the team has afforded me.  They treat me like an equal member of the team and encourage my professional development. For example, my manager suggested that I sign up for the next Foreign Service Officer Test.  I did, and I passed.  I’m currently going through the Foreign Service Officer process, and I can honestly say that if she hadn’t reminded me, the test day would have come and gone, just another June 10th.  One of the team members is a former Foreign Service officer, so I plan on getting his side of the story soon, but his willingness to share his experience with me truly makes me feel like I belong.

And finally, because I’m a second year Batten student and this is for the Batten blog, they’ve helped me develop a great potential APP topic.  I’m heading into the last week and a half of my internship when I write this, but I can say without a doubt that I will always remembered the things I have learned this summer.  If I had to pick one lesson that sticks out the most, it would be that policy really is everywhere, even in the skies above you.

Summer Internship Series #7

Our fifth internship post comes from Grace, MPP post grad 2014.

Time out.

Sometimes, you just need to call a time out and catch your breath.  That’s what this blog post is for me, a quick breather in the constant whirlwind that is New York City.  I’m starting to understand better why the city is called the big apple, the city that never sleeps, Gotham City, and the city so nice they named it twice.

This summer, I’ve been working at the Federal Farm Credit Banks Funding Corporation.  Yes, you read that right, farming and NYC do in fact have something in common – the Funding Corporation.  This government sponsored entity issues loans to farmers and facilitates investment in the market.

Where’s the policy, you ask?  The Funding Corporation uses policy in reactionary ways. They look mainly at monetary policy, farm policy, and regulatory policy.   What is the Federal Reserve’s interest rate?  When will this rate change?  How are Ben Bernanke’s public announcements going to affect the market?  Will the Farm Bill change the number of people that need loans?  How will the Dodd Frank Act and other “too big to fail” policies affect internal policies?  As a government sponsored entity, the Funding Corporation keeps a keen eye on the policy world.

The Funding Corporation doesn’t set policy, they study it.  They react to it.  They understand it.  And they need to follow policy because without knowing the intricacies of financial policy, they would not be able to set competitive rates that can help farmers.  In reality, that’s what it all comes down to – helping the farmers.  The internship has exposed me to a corporate environment with a strong mission.  What is better than that?

Working in New York, well, that’s quite something.  Working in the financial world in New York, that’s something even more special.  After all, this is the financial capital of the world (ok, London too, but I’m not in London, so NYC it is).  Ten weeks ago I couldn’t tell you about a debt security, 5-year non-call, or a floater.  Now, I not only can explain these terms, but I can stand on a rooftop at happy hour, talk with a financial analyst at Morgan Stanley, and not stick out like a sore thumb.  New York’s financial world is full of jargon that is the equivalent of muscle flexing – Did you issue a 3-year callable?  Well I did.  Look at my muscles.  BAM.

So work really never ends here.  Sure, my job is 8-4pm, but then there’s the post-work discussion, the weekend analysis, and the non-stop emailing about the market.  New York has, in every way, lived up to all of its nicknames.

Who has the countdown until the start of the fall semester?  I’m counting 4 weeks.  That’s 4 more weeks of internship experiences and financial jargon, combined of course with a little tourism and good ole fashioned New York City fun.

Time in.

Summer Internship Series #6

Our sixth internship post comes from Sheridan, MPP accelerated 2014.

A little known fact that most people don’t know is that Connecticut has the largest achievement gap, of any state in the country.  I’ve spent my summer working at the Connecticut Council of Education, as they work to close the state’s long standing  “achievement gap.” The Connecticut Council of Education Reform (CCER) works to raise public awareness about Connecticut’s achievement gap, advocate for education policies and reforms, and collaborate with the State Department of Education and district and school leaders to support the implementation of policies and reforms at the local level.

CCER is hosting myself and two other Graduate Summer Fellows in New Haven to conduct a financial analysis of Waterbury Public Schools. We are using methodology and resources provided by Education Resource Strategies (ERS). ERS is a non-profit consulting firm that works with leaders of public school systems across the country to rethink the use of district and school-level resources.

In collaboration with ERS, our analysis of Waterbury Public School’s spending is generating insights on how resources are currently allocated amongst Waterbury schools while offering a comparison to similar-sized school districts across the nation and other school districts within Connecticut. The insights of this analysis, and our corresponding recommendations, will be presented to Waterbury’s Board of education and the State Board of Education.  The goal of our team’s recommendations is to provide the district’s education leaders with an opportunity to view their resources holistically and consider funding trade-offs, empowering the district to intelligently invest in its most important priorities. Intelligent investment is one of CCER’s six major policy focuses for addressing Connecticut’s achievement gap.

Up to this point I’ve spent most of my time going through and coding the districts financial data to align with ERS’ methodology and analysis tools. Over the past couple weeks we’ve begun transitioning from the coding to the analysis phase of the project. Last week I met the Waterbury Superintendent and her leadership team to get an understanding of their budget process and their perspective on the district’s financial state. This week I’m traveling to Boston to meet with some of ERS’s directors, project managers, and data analysts to share our team’s preliminary findings and conduct a hypothesis generation discussion to brainstorm possible recommendations for Waterbury.

As I enter the final weeks of the fellowship I’m excited to have the opportunity to work with CCER again for my Advanced Policy Project (APP). While proposal approval is pending, CCER and I are looking into conducting an analysis of Connecticut’s formula for funding localities education systems to identify the most transparent, effective, and equitable method of supporting school districts.

At first I was weary of the impact I would have as a fellow or intern, let alone whether I would find something that would actually meet Batten’s “summer internship experience” requirement. But I have had a rewarding and fulfilling experience working at CCER to this point. I have been fortunate to being doing something that is discrete and requires making recommendations to education officials and leaders that are being seriously considered. Not to mention I have a newfound appreciation/expertise in Excel (Excel truly is a beautiful thing!). I’m having a real policy impact, which is the reason I wanted to join the Batten School and why I want to study/work on public policy.

Summer Internship Series #5

Our fifth internship post comes from Simone, MPP accelerated 2014.

Hey there Charlottesville! Are you holding up without me? Hopefully. With the closing of my college basketball career in March of this year, I am spending my first summer away from Charlottesville since I enrolled at UVA. No worries, I haven’t been squandering away the newfound freedom. My past eight weeks have been spent in the District of Columbia, with InterAction, the largest coalition of U.S. based international development NGOs.

I am working with InterAction’s public policy team. During the summer, the PP team spends the majority of its time focusing on advocacy to members of Congress before the July Fourth and August recesses. For the first few weeks of summer we were focused on getting the HR 1983 Food Aid Reform Act passed. HR 1983, or the Royce-Bass bill, was focused on amending the Food for Peace Act. Food for Peace is the primary U.S. food aid program, sending American grown food aid on American freighters to crisis areas. When Food for Peace began in 1966, the program made sense. American farmers needed the subsidies, the American maritime industry benefited from the increased business, and in a time with wars were fought on the high seas more American freighters in the ocean provided a security blanket. Alas, it is 2013, and the American farming industry is experiencing some of its biggest surpluses in years, freighters are one of the more inefficient forms of travel, and war is fought in the skies. These changes mean that the Food for Peace program is largely inefficient and outdated.

My responsibility during this time was to keep the PP team updated on developments amongst the House representatives. This meant attending a number of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s hearings on food aid reform. At my first hearing, one of the witnesses was Andrew Nastios, the former director of USAID. He told stories of being in the middle of famines in Ethiopia and Somalia, and watching as people wasted away while food aid was in transit. It would take months for the aid to cross the ocean, and then weeks to be trucked inland through war zones. It was clear from his testimony that the current Food for Peace system wasn’t working.

Our advocacy efforts consisted of one-on-one meetings with foreign affairs staffers, holding briefings for congressional aides, and creating sign-on letters from our 180-some members to send to the members of Congress.  The bill finally went to a vote, and unfortunately we did not get the result we wanted. The bill did not pass. There was one positive, 203 representatives voted yes to the amendment, a huge step forward from 2008 when a food aid reform bill didn’t even go to a vote.

Being on the advocacy side of international development and aid reform can be frustrating, when it seems like months of hard work go to waste when a bill doesn’t pass. But in this business there is no time to mope. The next push for InterAction is the Poe Bill, or the Foreign Aid Transparency Act, and there is no time to mourn losses. The most important thing I’ve taken away from my time at InterAction so far is this is a work of increments. Monumental change doesn’t happen overnight. Advocacy is delicate work, but hopefully my Batten training has prepared me well.  

Summer Internship Series #4

Our fourth internship post comes from Christine, MPP accelerated 2014.

I’m heading into the final weeks of my summer internship with the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT).  AAPT has over 10,000 members spread across the globe, and so the organization has a unique strength is at the local level.  This strength is especially important for education policies since most decisions happen locally even if the original policy was implemented at the federal level.

And that’s where my work comes in: members that want to pursue advocacy need resources and tools to do it effectively, and so I’m creating a set of materials for members to use.  While creating general materials means I can’t focus on a particular issue, in some sense that’s a good thing.  AAPT needs resources that will be applicable now and in the future.  Plus, if we want to encourage members to advocate locally, it’s almost impossible to make precise strategies and plans.  Thus, I’m creating a tutorial on how to advocate effectively (sort of an Advocacy 101, if you will), examples of one-pagers and strategies, and guides for where to find data.

If you think this sounds kind of like a rehash of our first year at Batten, you’re not far off.  I’ve been applying a lot of the things we learned at Batten to help others advocate, too.

In addition to the work I’m doing for AAPT, I also get to pursue other opportunities in DC.  For example, I’ve been to

• A poster session by the Einstein Fellows, a select group of K-12 science teachers that spend a year or two working in DC to get familiar with federal policies and efforts,

• Hearings on Capitol Hill on science issues, including a House Subcommittee on Space hearing about their version of NASA’s reauthorization,

• A workshop for new physics and astronomy faculty, and

• AAPT’s Summer Meeting in Portland.

The Summer Meeting was especially cool – I had some time to be a tourist in Portland, but I also got to attend workshops and listen to really interesting talks on physics.  However, the meeting did have some policy opportunities.  I got to meet and speak to the Executive Board about the importance of advocacy resources.  Many of the Board members (and other AAPT members) are interested in advocating for education issues, but they don’t know how.  They’re eager for resources to help them achieve their goals, and so it was nice to see the interest in my work.

Over the next couple weeks, I’ll be finalizing some of the materials and trying to get them online.  There was some talk about getting me to host a tutorial or workshop at the AAPT Winter Meeting in January to talk about advocacy.  Plus, during the Summer Meeting I think I managed to get involved with their Committee on Space Science & Astronomy, so it looks like I’ll be staying involved with AAPT for quite awhile!

Summer Internship Series #3

Our third internship post is from Madison, MPP post grad 2014.

Greetings from Beantown!  This summer, I am working and living in Boston, MA, and I am really enjoying exploring this great city.  I work with the nonprofit Technology Underwriting Greater Good (TUGG) through an organization called New Sector Alliance.  Batten’s very own Colleen Farrell (MPP 2012) is also an alum of this great program, which combines training and mentorship with nonprofit consulting services through an Americorps grant.  I am working with TUGG to help them standardize and codify their internal processes as they prepare to expand to San Francisco.  This means I’m doing a lot of process mapping, performance measurement, and working to implement a new client relationship management system.  Hopefully the work I am doing will allow TUGG’s Executive Director (and sole employee) to expand his reach without having to hire additional full-time employees.

While several of my first-year classes have helped prepare me for this work (looking at you, Professor Mahoney), I find that the experience that has most helped me this summer is working with Formative Change Group (FCG).  Although I had worked in the nonprofit world before, it wasn’t until working as a student consultant with FCG that I realized just how constrained some small nonprofits are.  Resources are incredibly hard to come by, and many nonprofits will sacrifice on things like capacity building and overhead in order to expand programmatic work.  This summer, I feel like I am going to make a real difference in TUGG’s ability to function, and I hope to continue that work with FCG next year in Charlottesville.

In the meantime, my next challenge is to find out where the best chowder is.  Can’t wait to see you all back in Charlottesville!

Summer Internship Series #2

Our second internship post is from Natasha, MPP post grad 2014.

I’ve just finished my sixth week at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFRPI). IFPRI is pronounced “if- pre,” which I didn’t learn until three weeks of being that intern who mispronounces the acronym. Don’t worry guys, I’m making Batten proud! IFPRI is a policy think tank that specializes in “sustainable solutions for ending hunger and poverty.” They do a lot of program analysis for the World Bank.

My summer project is to evaluate an innovative poverty reduction model in Tanzania that the Bank launched in 2011. The program is the first time a conditional cash transfer (CCT) was combined with a community-driven development (CDD) framework.

CCT’s are welfare programs that are conditional upon receivers’ actions. For example, the program I’m evaluating requires that all participating households meet the following education and health conditionalities:

1. all children age 7-15 must attend school, with a minimum 80% attendance rate
2. all children age 0-5 must visit a health facility three times a year
3. elderly household members (60+ years) must visit a health facility once a year

CCT’s represent a more holistic approach to poverty reduction- they aim to reduce short-term poverty with direct cash transfers, while also fighting long-term poverty by increasing human capital among the poor. CCT’s have had major successes, such as in Brazil where the Bolsa program saw poverty rates fall by 27.7% among treated households.

In the CCD framework, the poor are treated as partners in the development process. The model was developed in the 1990s when it became clear that the socio-political complexities of the field made topdown, state-led big development strategies ineffective. CCD initiatives give control of the development process, resources, and decision making to a community group. The underlying assumption is that communities are the best judge of how their lives and livelihoods can be improved, rather than an international group coming and saying, “we’re going to do this with the funds.” CCDs also offer the added benefit (at times) of ripple effects that include promoting equity, inclusiveness, efficiency and good governance.

The project I’m helping to evaluate represents the first time this combo-model has been tried, anywhere. So far the program has been evaluated at the baseline and midline (18 months after implementation) and I’m now working on the endline evaluation. I’ll be sure to report back on our findings- but (spoiler alert) we’re already seeing some exciting improvements!

It’s crazy how much Batten-knowledge I’ve used so far. My project, at times, feels like IPA II: The Eightfold Path Never Ends. And, I’ve now logged my 217th hour in Stata where I’ve been using…instrumental variables. Remember when we all considered skimming that chapter? Ha.

While our first year was challenging and grey-hair inducing, it feels good to look back and realize that all that work has now allowed me to be entrusted with interesting and meaningful work. (….Someone please remind me of this come midterms this fall!)