SPP’s Global Policy Academy (GPA) is organizing a rich schedule of courses this fall on a diverse set of topics: drug policy; military power, conflict management, and terrorism; policymaking; and legal empowerment. “GPA plays an important role at the School of Public Policy,” explained Founding Dean Wolfgang Reinicke. “It leverages some of the expertise and experience of the School and makes it available to public policy professionals around the world in a dynamic and useful way – one that enables them to more thoughtfully and effectively address some of the many public policy challenges we face today.”
GPA courses are both academically rigorous and policy-relevant, and are structured to bridge the gaps that too often exist between the public and private sectors, between theory and practice, and between academia and the policy worlds. The Academy attracts participants working in the public, private, and non-profit sectors from around the globe.
One of the popular courses that GPA offered last fall was the “Policy Workshop for Civil Society Leaders and Policy Makers from the Black Sea Region,” a five-day immersion program for future democratic leaders from the seven countries of the region. Participants developed practical solutions to regional policy problems related to democratic institution building, security policy, and transition economics. “It was enormously successful,” said Bernhard Knoll-Tudor, director of SPP’s Global Policy Academy. Dr. Michael Remmert, deputy to the director of policy planning at the Council of Europe, which co-organized the course with GPA, agrees. “We particularly appreciated that GPA was able to develop an intense and high-quality five-day immersion workshop in an interactive and responsive manner. They transformed objectives and ideas into concrete teaching modules with excellent speakers and varied working methods.”
One of the highlights of this fall’s schedule is the Policy Advisers Course for Eastern Europe. This annual event is organized with the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights in Warsaw. “This is the type of course that I wish I had been able to attend 20 years ago when I was a young policy adviser in the Polish government,” says Marcin Walecki, head, Democratization Department, ODIHR. “I often meet young policy professionals today who struggle with the same challenges that I faced. This course offers hands-on, structured, and comprehensive exercises focusing on the most important elements of policy advising.”
Another fall 2015 offering is the Legal Empowerment Leadership Course that GPA is organizing with BRAC University, in collaboration with the Open Society Justice Initiative and Namati. “This course comes at no better time,” says Zaza Namoradze, director, Budapest Office, Open Society Justice Initiative, noting that providing access to justice has recently been adopted as one of the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). During the three-day course in November-December, civil society leaders, government officials, development agency representatives, academics, researchers, and others will “explore core legal empowerment methodologies, interrogate evidence of impact, and develop strategies for advancing their efforts globally and nationally,” says Namoradze.
Inaugural George Soros Visiting Chair Yasmin Sooka, who will be spending the fall term at SPP, will be one of the faculty members for the Legal Empowerment Leadership Course. “We’re especially delighted that Yasmin Sooka will be able to participate in the Legal Empowerment course this fall,” commented Knoll-Tudor. “Her knowledge, experience, and perspective will be an invaluable contribution to the course.” Sooka will be presenting a case study from South Africa on sustaining legal empowerment over time, and also leading a separate session on legal empowerment in the post-2015 agenda.