Experiential Learning (EXL) Programme

CPF offers experiential learning experiences for young NGO professionals and students in Development Studies, Humanitarian Action, Gender Studies, and related fields, in partnership with universities and NGOs in the Netherlands.

The sessions are delivered as 2 x 3-hour in-person seminars where participants are engaged through interactive scenario building, ethical dilemma, and group analysis and reflection.

What Makes EXL Programme Distinct

• Global South–centred analysis grounded in lived professional experience

• Focus on ethical navigation, not idealised solutions

• Realistic case-based learning drawn from decades of global development experience of lecturers from the Global South with practical experience implementing programs in the Global South

• Explicit links between critical thinking and work readiness / progression

This is not a motivational talk. It is serious professional formation to complement rigorous academic offerings.

In short, CPF’s EXL Programme:

Provides rigorous, practice-oriented learning for future and young development professionals.

Models ethical, non-extractive engagement with Global South actors, who are not just guests but are leading the sessions.

Translates education into direct support for community-led development.

This means that every paid workshop, institutional partnership, or donor contribution creates dual impact:

1. Immediate impact
   – High-quality, ethical training for future and young development professionals
   – Better-prepared graduates entering the global development sector

2. Direct downstream impact
   – Financial and technical support to Global South CBOs
   – Investment in locally led solutions, leadership, and organisational sustainability

Our Flagship Courses

CPF’s approach combines decades of Global South professional experience, evidence-based analysis, and practical tools for enabling young professionals to:

• Explain power dynamics within the aid system and ongoing reform debates and decolonizing aid and shift-the-power discourse

• Critically assess accountability vs. participation trade-offs in development cooperation

• Apply decolonial, gender, and intersectional lenses to assessing programming choices

• Articulate how these debates translate into professional roles in global development

Responsible Leadership in the UN and other International Organizations — Perspectives from the Global South

• The United Nations remains one of the most influential actors in global development, humanitarian response, and norm-setting. Yet it is also one of the most contested. For students entering the development sector today, the UN represents both aspiration and contradiction: a space of global ideals operating within deeply unequal political and economic systems.

• Purpose: To critically examine what responsible leadership means within the UN system when viewed from Global South perspectives; and to help students translate critical insight into career-relevant competencies (policy literacy, systems thinking, ethical decision-making, and applied analysis). In this seminar, we will apply Global South–centred analysis grounded in lived professional experience; Focus on ethical navigation, not idealised solutions; Use realistic case-based learning drawn from UN and NGO practice; and Link critical thinking and work readiness.

This seminar can be complemented by deepening workshops on: policy careers, UN consultancies, feminist & decolonial practice, M&E, and advocacy strategy.

Integrating gender and preventing exploitation of global south actors, including violence against women in the aid sector

• “Shifting the power” and “decolonising aid” have gained traction in policy and practice. Yet gendered power, exploitation, and violence—especially as experienced by Global South women and women-led organizations—remain under-analysed and under-addressed, particularly in humanitarian response and academic discourses on decolonizing aid.

• Purpose: This seminar interrogates who power is being shifted to, who is still excluded, and what shift-the power advocacy could look like when gender is taken seriously within decolonising aid efforts. We will analyse decolonising aid and shift-the-power agendas through a gender lens; dentify gendered risks, exclusions, and harms within Global North–led initiatives; and understand structural drivers of exploitation and violence against women in the aid sector

*This seminar can be complemented by deepening workshops on

1. Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning Through a Power Lens

2. Early Career Strategy in Global Development