Employment and Workforce Development Programming for Rural Economies, October 2014

At the USAID Washington Learning Center in Crystal City, Virginia, InnovATE’s Kurt Richter and Sandra Russo presented to a room of USAID Mission and Bureau personnel on opportunities and challenges inherent to rapidly transforming food and agriculture sectors. Training participants broke into teams to tackle case studies focused on real world development challenges. Participants were prompted to look at the big picture dynamics of rural economies and think outside of the box to design workforce development programs. To inspire their designs, participants also reviewed program examples from countries such as Nepal, Haiti and Senegal. Daniel Sherrard, Provost of EARTH University in Costa Rica, presented some of the innovative ways his school is engaging students, including providing them opportunities to design and manage their own businesses.

As a part of this training, InnovATE was able to work directly with USAID representatives from country missions around the world including those in Nicaragua, Nigeria, Serbia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Jamaica.