Our Online and Face to Face Training Packages
Development interventions are more effective when they are informed by a solid understanding of context – whether international, regional, country-level, sectoral or local. To get real benefits from aid and minimise the risk of doing harm, development actors need to appreciate the political, economic and social ‘rules of the game’ in the places where they work, as well as the structure of incentives and the nature of the prevailing networks of interest and power. They must also be sensitive to the uncertainties involved in complex change processes and their implications for politically smart and adaptive programme design and delivery.
The Policy Practice has been running and continually updating our flagship ‘Political Economy Analysis in Action’ course since 2008, in collaboration with the Overseas Development Institute. Our trainers are all leading practitioners with years of experience of undertaking political economy analysis across the globe.
Our next course is starting in September 2025 - if you would like to find out further information, or to register, please see our course flyer or email training@thepolicypractice.com.
The Policy Practice have launched a new training course first run in June 2023: Political Economy Analysis for Action on Climate Change. This course draws on our flagship Applied Political Economy Analysis training course, but with material focussed on how PEA can maximise the effectiveness of action on climate change. The course tutors are Neil McCulloch, Sam Bickersteth and Niki Palmer. It is facilitated by Samantha Wade.
This course will equip participants to identify and manage the political economy challenges of the contexts in which they work, and to draw well-grounded conclusions for climate policy, strategy or programme design and implementation.
This course comprises eight interactive two-hour sessions spread over four weeks. In addition, we estimate that around two hours per week of additional individual study will be needed to complete the training course. You are given access to an online training platform. This provides you with online documents and links to recommended reading. You will be expected to work through session material each week (two sessions per week) and do essential reading.
This course will be running again from 19 May to 19 June 2025. For further information, or to apply, click here, or email training@thepolicypractice.com.
In addition to our flagship course, we offer a range of related services from shorter, bespoke training courses, to ongoing support to teams and organisations and mentoring for practitioners. We run our courses both online and face-to-face. We design courses for individual organisations, as well as running courses which are open for all to apply.
If you would like further information on our training courses, please email training@thepolicypractice.com.
TPP Principal and training coordinator, Samantha Wade, and TPP Director Laure-Hélène Piron, are delivering a training of trainers for WWF - World Wide Fund for Nature. The project will enable WWF staff who have already undertaken TPP's political economy analysis in action flagship course to develop the skills and confidence to deliver their own trainings to WWF staff and partners.
TPP Director Laure-Hélène Piron and TPP Assocate Nisar Majid are facilitating a political economy analysis process for the Swiss Development Cooperation regional Horn of Africa programme through a series of online workshops complemented by desk and field research.
TPP Directors Laure-Hélène Piron and Neil McCulloch delivered an in-person training for the Kulmis Support Team, a third party monitoring project advising the Swiss Development Cooperation Horn of Africa programme.