This summer, 35 students enrolled in the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service Master of Public Service degree program will conduct International Public Service Projects. The students will conduct projects in 24 countries on five continents.
The Clinton School has now placed students in 87 countries for IPSPs since 2006 – 45 percent of the State Department’s 195 recognized independent states. This includes Brazil, Guatemala, and Zimbabwe, three countries that are new IPSP host locations in 2019.
The Clinton School will be working with 15 new partner organizations this summer, including Junior Achievement Tanzania, Association of Albania Girls and Women, and Girl Up Initiative Uganda. Among the returning project partnerships are Winrock International, Heifer International, The Asia Foundation, and African Prisons Project.
“The International Public Service Project is one of the aspects that makes the Clinton School unique,” said Clinton School Dean James L. “Skip” Rutherford. “This summer’s projects, which take students across the world to work with a variety of organizations, are exceptional.”
The international service component exposes the students to unique challenges around the globe. The IPSP provides immediate and long-term impacts for the students and their organizational partners. Work sites and host organizations are selected collaboratively by Clinton School students and faculty.
Below is a closer look at their work.
Zach Baumgarten – The Asia Foundation (Colombo, Sri Lanka) – Baumgarten will research and produce an analytical program document on The Asia Foundation’s approach to and work on sensitizing and capacitating the Sri Lanka Police Service. He will also produce a document on future areas of work for the foundation on legal aid in Sri Lanka.
Maggie Benton – CESI (Angouleme, France) – Benton will work to establish contents for the international website of each CESI campus of the western region, help CESI to identify and create relationships with community colleges, and participate in general activity at Angouleme’s CESI campus and throughout the western region.
Christian Canizales – Helping Overcome Obstacles Peru (Arequipa, Peru) – Canizales will create a monitoring and evaluation framework for the organization’s Department of Children’s English. The framework will be utilized by organization administrators to determine program impact in student social and academic performance.
Andrew Counce – CESI (Angouleme, France) – Counce will help establish educational content and relationships with Business schools in Arkansas that will be a part of the curriculum at CESI. He will also help implement a project into the school that allows American students to come to France and receive their Masters Degree in Engineering at CESI.
Caleb Denton – Heifer International (Harare, Zimbabwe) – Denton will conduct a research project to help determine how to best increase market access for farmers that are involved in the livestock value chains of beef, goat, and poultry. He will also determine what other value chains best complement those three livestock chains.
Molly Emerson – Awamaki (Ollantaytambo, Peru) – Emerson will be completing a monitoring and evaluation project with the nonprofit Awamkai in Ollantaytambo, Peru. Through this project, she will be determining if Awamaki is fulfilling its goal of improving the lives of local women artisans. Once the project is finished, she will be working with Awamaki’s marketing department to turn these results into graphics to share online and with potential donors.
Bailey Fohr – U.S. Department of State (Washington, D.C.) – Fohr will spend the summer working as the sole intern in the State Department’s Office of Caribbean Affairs. Her responsibilities include providing input to and management of the office’s U.S.-Caribbean 2020 strategy portfolios, attending Caribbean-American diaspora meetings and think tank and NGO briefings on the Caribbean region, supporting the Bureau’s policy objective to advance support for the crisis in Venezuela within the Caribbean region, and working with other government agencies to strengthen U.S.-Caribbean relations.
Allison Gent – Junior Achievement Tanzania (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania) – Gent will monitor and evaluate youth business programs and provide the organization with monthly progress reports. She will ultimately develop an impact report that will aid the organization in obtaining new funding sources and greater support.
Savanna George – Association of Albanian Girls and Women (Tirana, Albania) – George will conduct best practice research into the use of a community safe space owned by the organization. She will also help develop life skills and dynamics of human trafficking coursework being implemented with shelter residents.
Megan Grubb – Cidades Sem Fome (São Paulo, Brazil) – Grubb will be working with staff to expand their community outreach for their current food security programs. She will specifically focus on the Small Family Farms project that trains farmers to adopt multi-crop farming techniques.
Ganelle Holman – Syrian Emergency Task Force (Little Rock, Ark.) – Holman will be developing an online PR platform to increase the storytelling network for the taskforce worldwide. She will also develop an annual fundraising program to support an orphanage and women’s center for internally displaced women and children in Idlib, Syria. Holman will archive their stories online at SyrianTaskForce.org.
Logan Hunt – Arthik Samata Mandal (Vijayawada, India) – Hunt will be completing an evaluation of Arthik Samata Mandal’s women livelihood program. He will be collecting data from participants of the program and using that data to evaluate the impact of the program to date.
Nathan Keltch – Public Affairs Centre (Bangalore, India) – Keltch will work with researchers on governance issues surrounding employment programs in Bangalore, India.
Adam Kleinerman – Community Cloud Forest Conservation (Cobán, Guatamela) – Kleinerman will evaluate how donated vegetation plots are affecting the health and nutrition of rural Guatemalans in the Alta Verapaz region.
Corinne Kwapis – Women Political Leaders (Brussels, Belgium) – Kwapis will be organizing the Women Political Leaders (WPL) Global Forum hosted in Tokyo, Japan. She will work with WPL’s Managing Director and Programme Director in Brussels to develop program content and manage partnership relations.
Shelby Morrow – Awamaki (Ollantaytambo, Peru) – Morrow will plan and carry out an evaluation on the confidence levels and decision-making power of Awamaki participants.
Reiko Muranaka – Wesley College (Mwanza, Tanzania) – Muranaka will plan, develop, and implement a training program and materials for business coaches (local business owners) enrolled in the business incubator program at Wesley College. Business coaches will work with and support students and local community members in the business incubator program who launch their businesses.
Justin Murdock – Awamaki (Ollantaytambo, Peru) – Awamaki is a women’s empowerment organization that works with artisan weavers to improve their financial stability and leadership capacity. Murdock will serve as the coordinator of a team of volunteers that will monitor and evaluate the effects of the organization’s programming on the women they aim to serve.
Shandrea Murphy-Washington – Department of Community Development, Government of Ghana (Accra, Ghana) – Murphy-Washington will be working at the Department of Community Development, Government of Ghana to evaluate the effectiveness of a UNICEF-funded vocational skills training program.
Christopher Ogom – FAO Kenya and Marsabit County Government (Marsabit, Kenya) – Ogom will help the County Government of Marsabit through the FAO program in addressing concerns on secure land tenure ship among indigenous communities of Marsabit County. He will be conducting a needs assessment that will help develop a robust localized land governance model.
Eric Osei – Neighbors Helping Neighbors (Ashland, Ky.) – Osei will create an evaluation plan to help to evaluate a garden program which aims to help the incarcerated to become master gardeners. He will also be attached to a seasonal grant writer to work on grants.
Richmond Osei-Danquah – Canopy Northwest Arkansas (Fayetteville, Ark.) – Osei-Danquah will be working on a research project to measure community attitudes around refugees and refugee resettlement. He will build on the work of last summer’s research intern and will help Canopy NWA determine the overall community perceptions of refugees and refugee resettlement in northwest Arkansas, the most common concerns or negative responses, and if they vary by city.
Alexis Pinkston – Florida Immigrant Coalition (Miami, Fla.) – Pinkston will work with volunteer attorneys and staff to improve application processes for the Florida Immigrant Coalition’s citizenship program. She will also work on the immigrant hotline to review and propose changes to the existing hotline protocols and create a training guide for hotline volunteers.
Damien Powell – The Starfish Foundation (Guayaquil, Ecuador) – Powell will work with the Starfish Foundation to evaluate its volunteer program and create an internal report recommending ways to improve the program and highlight areas of success. He will be looking at both the international and local volunteer programs to determine areas of concern, as well as highlight areas where the foundation is excelling.
Brady Ruffin – Nashville International Center for Empowerment (Nashville, Tenn.) – Ruffin will be working with the Community Empowerment Program to perform an evaluation of NICE’s Youth Education curriculum. This evaluation will serve to identify the most successful components of the curriculum and potential areas for improvement.
Jordan Sanders – Girl Up Initiative Uganda (Kampala, Uganda) – Sanders will be conducting an outcome evaluation for Girl Up Initiative Uganda to study the link between education and empowerment as it relates to their Adolescent Girls Program. She will use that information to document a program model and create suggestions to expand participants’ skill sets.
Christian Scott-Richards – Women Political Leaders (Brussels, Belgium) – Scott-Richards will work with Women Political Leaders to organize and plan the organization’s annual summit that will be held in Japan during the summer of 2019. This global event will bring together female Heads of State and Government, Ministers, and Parliamentarians from all over the world. It will give the participants the opportunity to exchange best practices of leadership, legislation, and political agenda setting.
Samantha Sheffield – European Community Organizing Network (Czech Republic, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland) – Sheffield will interview community organizers from across the world who have participated in events offered by the European Community Organizing Network in hopes of telling the story of the organization’s tireless work to empower people who wish to improve their communities.
Sean Street – Mass Challenge (Jerusalem, Israel) – Street will be working with Mass Challenge on programming, curriculum, and mentorship for reach of the startup companies which apply to the program. He will also evaluate the success of the Accelerator’s Program in meeting the needs of the program.
Maya Tims – Junior Achievement Tanzania (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania) – Tims will monitor and evaluate the organization’s work readiness programs. She will collect data and present findings in an impact report.
Alex Tingquist – European Federation of National Organisations working with the Homeless (FEANTSA) (Brussels, Belgium) – Tingquist will be working with FEANTSA, the only European NGO dedicated solely to fighting homelessness. He will be assisting the organization in gathering best practices for innovative housing solutions for those experiencing homelessness.
Rachel Villafane – The DREAM Project (Cabarete, Dominican Republic) – Villafane will perform an evaluation of the organization’s program to increase documentation among Dominican youth. She will analyze program records, as well as conduct interviews and observations to assess the program’s outcomes.
Ben Washington – Department of Community Development, Government of Ghana (Accra, Ghana) – Washington joins a project aimed at reducing child abuse by evaluating a joint effort between the Government of Ghana and UNICEF. He will conduct a thorough evaluation of the program to assess reach and efficacy.
Jerome Wilson – African Prisons Project (Kampala, Uganda) – Wilson will create an evaluation plan to measure the impact of African Prison Project’s Justice Changemaker Programme. He will develop data collection processes and create measures to assess the programs impact and barriers to its implementation.
Andrea Zekis – Winrock International (Kathmandu, Nepal) – Zekis will contribute several writing and research tasks towards the creation of a year-end annual report and project work plan for the KISAN II project, a USAID-funded sustainable agricultural program in Nepal. She will conduct interviews to determine the project’s impact and analyze data with Geographic Information Systems software as part of her tasks.
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