European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) - Young International Professionals Programme

At the end of 2019, ECDPM had 47 core staff members, of which 26 were women. Staff represents more than 20 nationalities: Algerian, American, Austrian, Belgian, British, Canadian, Croatian, Dutch, Ethiopian, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Mauritian, Mauritanian, Polish, Portuguese, South African, Spanish, Swedish and Swiss. In addition to the regular staff, 8 programme (mainly African based) associates closely work with the Centre. ECDPM further works closely with a broad network of individual consultants and consultancy agencies.

ECDPM has long-standing experience with different types of partnerships and collaborative arrangements in Europe and the ACP. These include governmental as well as non-governmental organisations at the local, national, regional and global levels. The objectives of ECDPM’s partnership approach include the sharing of experiences among the partners, the strengthening of capacities and the improvement of quality and impact of the work of the partners, in a long-term relationship. ECDPM is a European institute committed to work with the ACP countries and aims to reflect this in its staff establishment. The YIPP aims to contribute to this in a practical and effective manner, with long-term impact.

We believe this programme will provide young professionals from developing countries with the possibility to develop specialist knowledge, expertise and experience they cannot acquire otherwise. Secondly, we are convinced their interaction with our staff at ECDPM will strengthen our own sensitivity and cultural awareness vis-á-vis our stakeholders in Africa and the Caribbean, and beyond.

From the perspective of building partnerships this programme will be an instrument for strengthening our relationships with our partner organisations and, contribute to capacity development. In intensifying our contact with partner and peer organisations in this way we also expect to identify opportunities for our own staff to spend longer periods of time working with one or other of our partner organisations in the South. As a result, we expect opening this door to the ‘circulation of talent’ to benefit young non-European professionals, partners and peer institutes, as well as ECDPM itself.

Through the Young International Professionals Programme ECDPM aims to reach candidates with a post-graduate qualification in a relevant academic discipline (such as development studies, social sciences, international economics, agriculture economics, political economy of development, finance) and at least one year’s work experience. We expect such candidates to work with ECDPM as junior researchers, and to contribute to ECDPM policy-oriented research, to participate in writing papers, reports and other publications, and to be involved in other activities of the programme s/he will be integrated in. The candidate(s) will be full team members of the ECDPM programme they are attached to, participating in the activities of a wider group of young professionals who work as Research Assistants and Junior Policy Officers at the ECDPM office in Maastricht, in the South of The Netherlands. The mutual commitment is temporary by nature and designed especially to offer young professionals policy-relevant work experience. The contract period will be for a maximum of one year.

There are a limited number of YIP positions due to the size of our organisation. ECDPM will advertise YIP vacancies on this website page and through its external communications (our Weekly Compass newsletter for example). If you are interested in the YIP programme then please check our website regularly. It is also possible to send in an open application.