CCCUPIDS (The Canadian Consortium for College and University Programs in International Development Studies) is a professional association of directors and coordinators of International Development Studies programs in Canadian colleges and universities, working to strengthen programs across the country, coordinate intellectual exchanges and share teaching and learning resources between schools.

The conference and workshop was a part of International Development Week at Humber and was co-sponsored by the International Development Graduate Certificate Program and the Ontario Council for International Cooperation. 

This event hosted a panel including members of the NGO community, Humber academics, UN representatives and Global Affairs Canada speaking to an audience of largely high-level industry executives and Humber graduate certificate and degree students.

The afternoon workshop allowed Humber students to engage with industry professionals on a series of case studies highlighting the complexities of this sensitive issue in an international setting.

This event highlighted Humber’s mission of developing global citizens and fostered collaboration across Humber schools and departments.

Upon graduation from the International Development Degree at Humber, Ryan Geleynse began working with EduDeo Ministries as the Eastern Canada Key Relationship Manager. EduDeo is an organization that works to advance and support Christian education around the world. Ryan’s job is to build relationships with EduDeo’s donors, whether households, schools, churches or foundations, and to find alignment between their passions and the organization’s projects.

Ryan secured a placement during his degree with World Renew, an organization linked to the Christian Reformed Church. His placement in the Global Volunteer Department became a source of income and employment as he completed his degree. World Renew places hundreds of volunteers in roles around the world every year to respond to disasters, work in community development or to service communities. Ryan loved that the organization’s volunteers would range from students to retirees.

Ryan says, “I’m so thankful for education I received at Humber. My degree provided a critical lens for engaging some of the challenges within the sector. I can approach our donors with confidence, knowing I’m there to advocate on behalf of our partners, providing necessary nuance to conversations that may head off the rails, otherwise. However, I miss the readings, the papers around topics I found provoking, and classroom discussions we had at Humber.”

Ryan married during his time at Humber College. His wife works in the international development field, too; however, her career has been suspended as she gave birth to their first child in July, Oliver, a baby boy. Congratulations!

The students were introduced to systems and design thinking for social innovation. After selecting a complex social problem found in their home community they would like to explore more, the students used systems thinking as a tool to identify the relevant stakeholders and gain a better understanding of the system’s behaviour. Mapping the system allowed students to zoom out, learn how all the different parts of the system are interrelated and identify possible intervention points. Using a human-centred design approach, students then framed the problem and zoomed in on one solution that they could implement in their home community while being full-time students. By the end of the program, the Parul University students pitched a social enterprise as a solution to the problem. Both student groups revealed they hope to submit a proposal for start-up funding at Parul University in the following semester as they believe their solution is feasible and sustainable.

The event was well attended by students from the International Business, Marketing and Digital Business Management Degree programs, as well as faculty and staff from various departments around Humber College. The Job Market Panel of six individuals was represented by industry professionals, Program Advisory Committee members, and Humber alumni from the International Business and Marketing Degree programs.

Kicking-off with a brief introduction by members of the panel, the topics of conversation included career development, industry trends, and value creation. The students then posed industry and job-specific questions to members of the panel. Their responses were insightful and well received by the engaged and curious students. The event concluded by breaking out into a networking opportunity for the attending students.

Run by the Canadian Council for International Cooperation, this committee will develop policy recommendations around the prevention and management of sexual misconduct in the International Development and Humanitarian aid sections.

Susan will be on the committee with 12 other International Development professionals from organizations including World Vision, Save the Children, the Canadian Red Cross and more. Susan is the only person from an academic institution on the steering committee. 

Congratulations, Susan on this wonderful achievement!

The Roundtable focused on gender inequities in entrepreneurship in Indonesia. Working with Kent Schroeder, the Principal Investigator for an ARI funded research project on the topic, the students collaboratively developed a draft research framework for the study. The draft framework will be taken to Indonesia in May where faculty and students from six universities will finalize it for the Indonesian cultural context and assist with data collection and analysis. Ultimately, the research results will be used by the Indonesian universities to revise their applied entrepreneurship curriculum to better address the needs of women-owned micro-enterprises.

Ken is working as a Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Advisor for Uniterra. The M&E role involves tracking the progress of Uniterra programs, ensuring that the organization is meeting its goals and objectives on time, which are skills he learned during his time at Humber.

With Uniterra - a program jointly managed by 2 Canadian international development organizations, CECI and WUSC - Ken's responsibilities include co-designing, administering, and supervising data collection activities from project partners in Mongolia. This data is used to draft reports and monitor achievements to help the program meet its overall objectives of changing people's attitudes toward the real needs of the country and to reduce poverty.

"My time at Humber was amazing!" said Ken. "I feel that the ID program has given me a clearer understanding of the development industry & practice, along with a better understanding of my own vision for my future. The program faculty come with a wealth of experience, and have equipped me with practical skills that prove to be useful in the field."

Ken's overseas placement for his Bachelor's Degree was with the Emmanuel Development Association (EDA), a grassroots development organization based in Ethiopia. He worked as EDA's Program Support Officer in the organization's regional office just a few hours from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. With EDA, Ken tested his new skills during the implementation of USAID and Government of Canada-funded poverty reduction projects.

Femme International is an organization dedicated to promoting and teaching menstrual health and hygiene to girls across the globe in order to unleash a generation of strong, confident and healthy women. This February, Femme International hosted its stakeholder meeting for menstrual health actors in Tanzania where Jane Goodall was Femme’s guest of honour. Congratulations to Sabrina and the Femme International team on all of their important work. Make sure to follow Femme International and Sabrina on Twitter for all upcoming Femme International news.

This exercise - which lasted 6 days - involved ID students and Canadian Forces members role-playing a refugee crisis scenario. Humber students played a variety of roles during the 6-day educational exercise such as international aid workers, UN employees, refugees and general civil society, while the military members played themselves.

The students were asked to participate in the exercise by Lt. Col. Allan Best, an alumnus of Humber’s International Development Management Certificate program as well as a frequent guest speaker at Humber. In the evening, Lt. Col. Best and the military members received feedback about the day's events from ID students, which everyone present found very rich and informative. Initially, the military was only looking for bodies to play roles; however, after this experience, they are keen to formalize the partnership such that this happens once a year.

The Humber ID students were able to learn valuable skills through this unique opportunity, such as problem-solving, thinking under pressure and teamwork. They were able to see first-hand how international military actors respond to humanitarian situations, as well as their limitations in those scenarios.

Thank you to Lt. Col. Allan Best and the Canadian Forces for inviting our students to take part in this wonderful exercise, and to our International Development students for being dedicated and professional participants.

He was invited to speak about his new book to an audience of government officials, business leaders and civil society representatives.

The book, entitled Politics of Gross National Happiness: Governance and Development in Bhutan, has its origins in two international development projects implemented by the Business School.

It explores the political dynamics surrounding the implementation of Bhutan’s unique alternative economic development paradigm and focuses on the larger practical and theoretical implications for alternative economic development beyond Bhutan’s borders. The book is published by Palgrave Macmillan.

The Challenge is an annual competition where students and young professionals from around the world write and submit a personal narrative essay based around the management philosophy of Peter Drucker.

This year’s entrants were asked to write a narrative-based essay on the theme of human prosperity in a changing world. Shivanie placed in 6th place out of ten in the Manager/Entrepreneur Category. Her essay discusses the power of human potential and people's drive to live a happy, successful and meaningful life despite the societal and economic factors preventing many people across the globe from doing so.

As a winner, Shivanie will have the privilege of travelling to Vienna, the birthplace of Peter Drucker, to participate in the 9th Global Peter Drucker Forum on November 16-17, 2017. She will be able to attend the Drucker Challenge Get-Together and Speakers' reception at City Hall, the Gala event/Awards ceremony and a guided tour at Schönbrunn Palace. She will also receive a certificate of achievement and a one-year-all-access subscription to the Harvard Business Review.

Congratulations, Shivanie, on winning this award and writing a fantastic, moving essay. 

In 2016, Satu completed three years of The Business School's Bachelor of Paralegal Studies program, and the law modules she completed at Humber College were sufficient to qualify her for admission to graduate studies at Utrecht University. Her only other prerequisite for admission was the successful completion of a course on EU Law. Furthermore, Shirley Wales, a professor in the Paralegal Studies degree program, and Bernie Aron, the Program Coordinator of the Paralegal Studies degree program provided strong academic references for Ms. Flynn who was an outstanding student in the degree program.

We're thrilled to see that Satu Flynn will continue to pursue her legal education at the graduate level at this prestigious institution. Congratulations and best of luck with your studies!

Lynn McAuliffe, Melanie Shulman, Maria Racanelli and Mike Dover each had the exciting opportunity to spend upwards of a week at partner institutions in Denmark, The Netherlands and Austria.

During their stay at these institutions, the faculty members had the privilege of giving lectures and conducting workshops on their respective areas of expertise to international students and faculty.

Each institution hosted an International Week for its exchange partner faculty members. During the week's events, faculty from multiple countries networked, learned from one another and participated in lectures and workshops. Mike Dover participated in Lillebaelt Academy University of Applied Sciences’ first-ever International Week. Lillebaelt hosted a LEGO Serious Play Workshop for its visiting faculty.

The Business School values these international experiences for faculty as a way to further internationalize its curriculum. Participating faculty members get the unique opportunity to learn from international colleagues, share best practices, bring new ideas into their classroom and explore new ways to deepen academic partnerships.

Participation in the five-week Orientation Program had students strengthening both their English-language and academic skills. The students had two deliverables at the end of the five-week program:

1. A written report preceded by a mind-mapping exercise and the development of an outline using their research findings, and 
2. A collaborative micro-workshop where student groups developed and facilitated a presentation and interactive activity for their peers.

The August Orientation Program provided the platform needed to introduce students to the academic skills that are critical to their success at Humber. But the August Orientation was not only hard work, the students also played hard.

If you were downtown Toronto on Saturday, August 12, you may have witnessed groups of Ningbo students running around the city completing their Urban Challenge. Students were given clues to find five different stations where they had to successfully complete a puzzling task before getting their next clue. An alumnus of the Humber-Ningbo program returned to develop the most difficult Urban Adventure yet.

Welcome to our Ningbo students. We wish you the best of success during your stay at Humber! 

The came for a two-week Leadership Beyond Boundaries program. 

Students participated in three modules: Global Leadership, Cross-Cultural Communications and Social Entrepreneurship. The theme that guided the curriculum was People, Planet and Profit. This short summer program was an introduction to youth leadership for positive social change. Students were asked to identify a social problem in their home country and then learned how to use templates in ideation to solve a problem. Students were also introduced to Lean Canvass—a model that students can use to begin developing their idea for a social enterprise.

At the end of the program, the student participants had two more creative problem-solving tools to add to their toolbox of essential skills. Moreover, the program resonated with the students. Students agreed that the Leadership Beyond Boundaries program helped them to better identify social problems and how they can make a difference.

At this session, they learned about the Design Thinking Methodology and Project-Based Learning as a way to better engage students. The session introduced a framework for creative, project-based learning that will be implemented in the Ningbo classrooms to foster the development of creative problem-solving skills and an entrepreneurial mindset among students. The faculty and staff were enthusiastic and committed participants. They are excited to implement something new to better engage the students.

Currently, Nathaniel is completing his work placement at the Heritage Lower Saint Lawrence nonprofit organization located in the Quebec village, Metis-sur-Mer. There, Nathanial is helping to serve the English speaking community in the area by mobilizing people and resources, and by promoting interests like improving their health services.

When he heard that the Prime Minister was making an appearance and speaking at a public event nearby, he immediately decided to attend after work.

At the event, Nathaniel had the unique opportunity to ask the Prime Minister if he had any advice for young Canadian professionals working in the international development field. Nathaniel also told the Prime Minister about his upcoming role as an Environmental Sustainability Officer with a Canadian organization called EQWIP HUBs working in Senegal.

His response was for Canadians in this field to work for smaller organizations who are working to improve the lives of women and girls. This is how we will achieve the greatest change in developing communities.

“This was a special moment for me,” said Nathanial about the Prime Minister’s response. “It has inspired me to do my best and effective work when I am in Senegal with EQWIP HUBS.”

Congratulations to Nathaniel on his success and best of luck with your work in Senegal.