Experiential Learning (EXL) Programme

CPF delivers high-quality seminars, workshops, and applied training for universities, development practitioners, and institutions working in international development, humanitarian action, and human rights.

These offerings focus on areas to complement formal education—providing young people the space for reflecting, challenging conventions, and contributing to both academic and practical discourse on power, gender, decolonisation, accountability, safeguarding, and responsible leadership.

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.

• Translates education into direct support for community-led development.

Our Flagship Courses

CPF is offering 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.

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

1. Immediate impact
   – High-quality, ethical training for future development professionals
   – Better-prepared graduates entering the UN, NGOs, and donor institutions

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

Seminars include:

• 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 and 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