Jude Fernando is completing a book, Political Economy of NGOs: Modernizing Post-modernity, which examines the controversial social roles of micro-credit NGOs in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and their links to the state, based on his long-term fieldwork in the 1990s. He was principal investigator for the project, “Sustainable Development and Civic Society,” funded by the Office of Sustainable Development and Intergovernmental Affairs of the U.S. Department of Commerce and in 2002 organized the international conference, “Sustainable Development in Urban Communities.” He has consulted for the Asia Foundation, IFAD and the World Bank. In Sri Lanka he worked in conflict zones for World Vision. Fernando previously taught at the Department of Geography and Regional Development and the International College at the University of Arizona; Dordt College, Iowa; and was a visiting lecturer at the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka.
Last year, Fernando and his colleagues in Sri Lanka established the Alfa Children and Youth Training Institute in Sri Lanka (ACUIS), a non-governmental organization (NGO) to assist children and youth affected by the Southeast Asian Tsunami of 2004. ACUIS resulted from the lessons Fernando learned while working with tsunami victims and conducting participant observer research on humanitarian assistance provided by existing NGOs in the region. He found many of these organizations rarely invest much time and resources for creating a viable learning environment conducive for long term formal education and vocational training facilities that would lead to sustainable employment and resettlement for the displaced children and youth. Fernando felt that a fundamental pre-requisite for improving the quality of life for those is a viable learning environment that would complement the services provided by the public school system. By using an experimental child-centered rights based approach model to social change, Fernando hopes to combine academic research with practical projects aimed towards positive social change.