6th Class, 2011-2013
Field Placement: Mercy Corps, Dili, Timor-Leste and Jakarta, Indonesia
Matt Styslinger spent his field year working with Mercy Corps Indonesia and Mercy Corps Timor-Leste to strengthen monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems and staff capacity around M&E for farmer support, nutrition, economic development for internally displaced people, food security, and aquaculture projects. He worked with the two country offices to establish a standardized logical framework and monitoring data collection framework for all projects. Matt also developed photo essays, videos, case studies, and other communications materials for field projects.
Check out the videos Matt created of the Spice Up the Deal spice market development project in Indonesia and of an aquaculture pilot project, Fishing for Change in Timor-Leste as well as his photo essay of the Sustainable Crop Production, Utilisation, and Resource Management through Capacity Enhancement (SECURE) food security project in Timor-Leste.
Policy Placement: Mercy Corps, Washington, DC
Based in Washington, DC, Matt was a Food Security Technical Advisor with Mercy Corps’ global Food, Health, and Nutrition Technical Support Unit (TSU). He supported Mercy Corps’ field food security programs through M&E, proposal review, communications, and field-based research to integrate Mercy Corps’ experience with the local/regional procurement (LRP) approach to food aid into the larger body of knowledge around global food security. He also represented Mercy Corps in DC-based consortiums, working groups, and alliances around food security.
Pre-Fellowship Education/Experience:
Over the past six years, Matt has lived in Vietnam, Mexico, Bangladesh and South Africa working with a number of NGOs on projects ranging from the AIDS orphans crisis in Johannesburg to clean water in Bangladesh. On returning to the United States, Matt served at World Learning for International Development’s Program Development Unit in Washington, D.C. An Anthropology major as an undergraduate at the University of Texas, Matt earned an MA in Sustainable Development with a focus on Monitoring and Evaluation at the SIT Graduate Institute in Vermont in 2009.