The Centre for Public Authority and International Development has held two-day workshops for its Public Authority and Humanitarianism course. Each workshop is attended by practitioners and academics from the region who were eager to explore how a public authority lens could be applied to their work. Participants brought their experience of responding to the region's humanitarian challenges while working for the UN Mission in South Sudan, international NGOs, and civil society organisations.
FLIA is the academic partner for the UN’s Global Executive Leadership Initiative training programme Influencing for Senior Leaders: Analysis, Strategy and Practice. The course is aimed at senior executive leadership working in the humanitarian sector and equips them with crucial skills such as problem and context analysis, effective advocacy, and public and private influencing. The programme has been delivered to 11 cohorts since 2022, each with around 30 participants, and has spawned a podcast; GELI stories.
The Global Land Initiative is collaborating with LSE to offer a free course for communicators interested in raising awareness in their own countries of land degradation and what can be done to prevent, reduce or halt it, and to restore degraded and manage at-risk land. The course will cover: an introduction to land restoration, the problem and solutions; power and systems thinking for effective influencing; strategic communications and building a persuasive narrative; media engagement in a crowded public sphere; broadening your communications tools; a visit to a land restoration project site in the UK.
The Influencing and Political Acumen Programme in collaboration with the Asari Foundation is designed to enhance the strategic thinking and advocacy skills of professionals working in civil society organisations in the Middle East and North Africa. Combining online and in-person learning, the programme covers essential influencing strategies, contextual civil society issues, and practical skill-building. Participants receive mentoring from experts and develop influencing proposals tailored to their organisations' goals. Selected proposals may qualify for additional grant funding, enabling participants to turn their strategies into actionable projects that advocate for meaningful social change.
In Liberia, Assistant Professor Dr Robtel Neajai Pailey ran a one-month short course at Cuttington University for students at the host institute and the University of Liberia. The partnership will serve as a foundation for staff and student exchanges between LSE and both institutions. The partnership will also strengthen ties for potential collaboration on future research projects.