World Bank- IMF Workshop in Washington DC

I attended a 5 day long (3-7 March'08) workshop on Finance and Development organized jointly by the World Bank & IMF for the Humphrey Fellows in their head offices in DC. In total 43 fellows from different campuses attended. On the opening day of 3 March, it was just reception cum dinner hosted by the WB head office. Then the next 2 days were scheduled for IMF & the last days were for WB activities. The IMF sessions covered overview, world economic & financial market developments, IMF program design & conditionality, IMF survellience for the member countries, poverty reduction & debt relief, growth & poverty reduction in the sub-saharan African countries ; and IMF reform efforts. One unique arrangement was made of a speech by someone while fellows took their luncheon. In all of the sessions speakers tried to highlight different aspects of the IMF in the context of growing criticism of the organization by the world community. One speaker mentioned of a joke that if a country's economic conditions improve after the IMF program adoption, all credits go the respective country's own policies whereas if it detriorates, all blames lie on the failures of IMF. I personally enjoyed IMF sessions (and also the good food served!)
WB sessions were held on the top floor of their main building on 18th street. It covered WB organogram, functioning mechanism of IDA, governance, evaluation mechanisms of WB initiated projects, global evironment issues and so on. Most of the sessions were very interactive & fellows found ample scopes to make questions or comments.
Joining to the WB-IMF workshop was indeed a previledge. We came to know many aspects of those 2 world class institutions. Also many items (T-shirts, souvenir bags, electronic diary etc.) were gifted to the participants.
Out of 43 fellows, 11 were from Boston University. Also BU fellows (in picture) were more active in the workshop sessions. I personally stayed active in all of the sessions I could attend. Attending in such a workshop is definitely in line with the prestige & honor associated with being a Humphrey Fellow.