EPRC is hosting Aid Data Interns for the second year
For the second consecutive year, the Economic Policy Research Center (EPRC) in partnership with AidData is hosting interns from American universities who have been accepted into AidData’s Summer Fellows program. The AidData Center for Development Policy, headquartered in Virginia, USA, is a development research lab supported by USAID. AidData partners with several universities and organizations in over 20 countries to promote the transparency and accessibility of development finance aid. Through focused research and visualization of their geocoded datasets, AidData and its partners strive to answer questions of who is doing what and where to enable more effective aid targeting and coordination, and more informed decision making.
The Summer Fellows program is an opportunity for students interested in GIS, foreign aid, and international development to spend 2 to 3 months placed with a variety of civil society organizations around the world. Serving as ambassadors for AidData, the students are responsible for training CSO members to employ GIS and geocoded data to help solve development issues in their own communities. AidData currently has 16 summer fellows placed at institutions in Uganda, the Philippines, Peru, and Ghana.
Robert Francis and Emily Anderson are the summer fellows currently embedded with the EPRC. Robert is currently enrolled in Brigham Young University’s Political Science BA Program, with an emphasis in International Development. Emily Anderson recently received a graduate GIS certificate and will be starting a master’s degree in Applied Geography and Geospatial Technology in September 2015. They will be working from June until early August to assist with research activities and provide capacity building to the EPRC researchers in order to promote the use of geospatial data and experimental impact evaluation. In addition to providing general research assistance to the EPRC staff, Emily and Robert will conduct a series of training sessions on the use of geospatial data and experimental methods. Emily, in leading the instruction on geospatial analysis, will teach participants how to use ArcGis to map, analyze, and present data. Robert will lead training sessions dealing with the use of experimental and quasi-experimental methods to conduct impact evaluations of development projects.
The anticipated long-term result of these trainings is that EPRC researchers will integrate these new techniques into their existing and future research projects. Emily and Robert also hope to leave with a broader perspective and skill set that they can then apply in their future work along with a greater personal and professional understanding of development in general and more specifically the economic issues facing Uganda.
