IEDP 2023
WHERE DID WE GO?
For the 2022-2023 academic year, the International Economic Development Program (IEDP) traveled to Chile. Given Chile's status as a High Income Country, considered a 'developed' and not developing country, this year's cohort focused on three key questions:
What has been Chile's economic and social development journey to date?
Applying the lens of the Sustainable Development Goals, what development successes and challenges exist nationally in Chile today?
What are stakeholders currently doing within these areas of success and challenge to pave a path forward?
While in Ann Arbor, the cohort spent seven weeks learning about the history, political, social, and cultural context of Chilean Policy, from Allende to Pinochet, to the Chicago Boys and the 2019 social protests. While abroad, the cohort set up base in Santiago, the country's capital. Santiago is known for many things: one of three homes of the poet Pablo Neruda, a world-renowned wine exporter, prestigious universities, and numerous national governmental agencies, allowing for ease of transportation for stakeholder engagements. A full cultural day was spent in Valparaiso, a famous port city and UNESCO site on Chile's coast. It is also home to the country's legislative congress, headquarters of the country's navy, and known for its innovative transportation policy--ascensor--given the hilly nature of the city's landscape. We spent a day in San Jose de Maipo to visit the country's water reserves and learn more about the policy processes of municipality-level government. Lastly, we spent our last morning in the country visiting Santo Domingo to tour the wetlands of Humdel Rio Maipo.
WHAT DID WE STUDY?
The 2023 cohort was divided into groups to study four main policy areas— Women's Economic Empowerment, Lithium Policy, Education Policy, and Chile-as-a Donor State.
Each policy area served as a lens to understand the Sustainable Development Goals and the successes or challenges Chile has had in each respective area while understanding the country's policy approaches when thinking about the future.
WHO DID WE MEET?
Women's Economic EMpowerment
Fundación para la Promoción y Desarrollo de la Mujer (PRODEMU)
Foundation for the Promotion and Development of Women is the first Institution of the State that takes charge of the needs, requirements, and demands of women in Chile at the return of democracy, with the aim of facilitating their participation, organization, and integral development, promoting their empowerment and encouraging them to achieve a better quality of life. The Foundation reaches more than 60,00 women and is present in all 16 regions of Chile.
Fundación ChileMujeres
ChileMujeres is a non-profit organization that works for the equal rights and employment opportunities of women in Chile, through public and business policies. Through their private-sector membership program Red-Activa, they collect gender-based data from member organizations to promote inclusive and equitable workplaces.
Servicio Nacional de la Mujer y la Equidad de Género (SernamEG), Ministerio de la Mujer y la Equidad de Género
SernamEG is the implementation arm of the Ministry of Women and Gender Equity. They oversee the execution of policies, plans, and programs that strengthen the autonomies and rights of women, with specific consideration on rural communities and the different intersections of women.
TECFEM
TECFEM is a non-profit organization working to close gender gaps and encourage entrepreneurship and employment of women in technical and professional STEM careers.
Observatorio del Contexto Económico de la Universidad Diego Portales (Observatorio Laboral De Genero)
The Gender Lab contributes to the monitoring of labor differences by gender, delivers inputs for evidence-based analysis, and facilitates the design and monitoring of public policies in favor of gender equality.
Central Unitaria de Trabajadores de Chile
The Workers' United Center of Chile is a union federation in Chile. CUT fights for the defense of workers, a higher minimum salary, flexible and decent work, an inclusive economy, and more in regard to labor rights for the working class.
Education Policy
Fundación Moisés Mellado
The Foundation is a non-profit organization associated with the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the University of Chile. They help students through scholarships so that they continue their studies. They award 300 scholarships a year.
Dr. Felipe Malgüe
Dr. Felipe Malgüe is a current Labor Inspector at the Department of Labor for the Chilean government, a faculty member in the department of government at the University of Chile, and faculty in Business and Finance at the Technological University of Chile. Dr. Malgüe has written extensively about labor rights and employment in the Chilean context. His most recent article, Derecho a la desconexión digital en Chile: manifestación del derecho al descanso, is about the legal protections of workers in Chile to take rest time, and re-defining work in the era of remote work.
Dr. Josefa Aguirre
Dr. Josefa Aguirre is an assistant professor at the school of government at Universidad Católica de Chile. She holds a PhD in economics and education from Teachers College Columbia University. Her research explores policy-relevant questions in the field of applied microeconomics. Her particular areas of specialization are in the economics of education and the labor market. Her research strives to understand the educational investment decisions and labor market performance of disadvantaged groups, including low-socioeconomic status individuals and women.
Aptus
Aptus Chile is a non-profit organization that seeks to improve the quality of education in underprivileged schools. Its mission is to transfer efficient management and pedagogical methodologies and products with the purpose of generating better learning in students.
UNESCO Chile
The UNESCO Representation for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean was created in 1963 with the purpose of supporting Member States in improving their educational systems. Their mission is to lead, monitor and provide technical support to the countries of the region through each of their lines of action to move towards the fulfillment of Sustainable Development Goal 4 - Education 2030. The office in Santiago serves as the national representation of UNESCO in Chile.
Calidad de Educacion
The Education Quality Assurance Agency was created in 2011 as part of the School Education Quality Assurance System (SAC), also made up of the Ministry of Education, the Superintendence of Education, and the National Council of Education. They are an autonomous public agency that is related to the President of the Republic through the Ministry of Education. The work of the Quality Agency is divided into three main pillars: Evaluate, Inform, and Guide the educational system to contribute to improving the quality and equity of educational opportunities for all students in Chile.
Lithium Policy
Reborn Electric Motors
Reborn is a B Company promoting electromobility and sustainability. They are a Chilean engineering company started by a group of electrical and mechanical engineers with international experience in the design of electric vehicles. They are the first electric vehicle factory in Latin America.
Ministry of Mining
The Ministry of Mining is the cabinet-level administrative office in charge of matters and policies related to mining in Chile.
Alta Ley Corporation
Alta Ley Corporation is an organization designed to articulate the capacities established in public and private organizations and agencies in the mining industry, with the purpose to promote and boost the development of the sector, through initiatives, programs and projects that solve the relevant challenges of mining needs through development and innovation, technology transfer and collaborative work, among all the entities of the ecosystem, to improve the competitiveness and sustainability of the mining business.
Juan José Martin
Martin was the coordinator of the Constitutional Commission on the Environment, Rights of Nature, Shared Natural Resources, and Economic Model. He is a prominent climate activist in Chile and the co-founder and former president of Cverde, a non-governmental not-for-profit organization dedicated to spreading sustainability through projects of direct intervention in education, waste management, volunteering, ecosystems regeneration, political advocacy, renewable energy, and hydric resources, among other areas. He was also the general coordinator of the Conference of Youth in 2015, where he convened international environmental youth activists under YOUNGO and the UNFCCC.
Chile-As-A-DOnor-State
Fundacion Para el Progreso
FPP is a Chilean libertarian think tank and study center for professionals, young people, opinion leaders, academics, and public intellectuals in Chile. They promote their discussions and values around a free society through publications, original research, training programs, public discussions, the media, and much more.
Agencia Chilena de Cooperacion Internacional para el Desarrollo (AGCID)
AGCID captures, provides, and manages resources for international cooperation, through international cooperation, as well as through the dissemination of opportunities for training and improvement of human resources abroad.
Pacific Alliance
The Pacific Alliance is an initiative of regional integration comprised of Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. The alliance’s goals are to promote the free movement of goods, services, capital, and people, and to promote greater competitiveness and economic growth in member countries.
The Germany Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ)
GIZ is a service provider in the field of international cooperation for sustainable development and international educational work. GIZ engages om bilateral cooperation with Chile within the areas of renewable energies, SDG and vocational training, disaster risk management, and triangular cooperation among many other areas.
Entire Cohort
Dr. Luis Garrido Vergara at the University of Chile Faculdad de Gobierno
Dr. Vergara is the director of the School of Government and Public Management of the Faculty of Government of the University of Chile. He is a deputy researcher at the Center for Studies of Conflict and Social Cohesion (COES) in the line of political and social conflict. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Cambridge and a Master's Degree in Management and Public Policy from the University of Chile.
Villa Grimaldi
Villa Grimaldi is a memorial and education site of a former detention and torture site under the Pinochet dictatorship. Based in Santiago, Villa Grimaldi was once a private estate, taken over by the secret police of DINA. Now, the site commemorates the victims of state-sponsored terrorism and exposes the human rights violations against the men and women held in detention. The Villa Grimaldi Park for Peace Corporation is funded by the Government of Chile, through the National Cultural Heritage Service.
Humedal Río Maipo
This wetland nature park is preserved through Fundación Cosmos and the Municipality of Santo Domingo to foster biodiversity, birdwatching, environmental education, and public management.
Peumayen Ancestral Food
Peumayén Bellavista is a high-scale restaurant focusing on the ancestral cuisine of Chile's native communities from the Quechua in the North to the Mapuche and Huilliche communities from the Andean plains around Santiago and Patagonia.
