Ludwig Center for Community & Economic Development

Educating Tomorrow’s Social Innovators and Policy Entrepreneurs to Apply New Solutions to Lasting Social Problems

The Ludwig Center for Community and Economic Development, part of the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization, works at the intersection of law, policy, entrepreneurship, economics, and social innovation to research and design creative, testable, and scalable solutions to community development challenges at the local, national, and global levels.

Much more needs to be done to understand how communities can achieve a sustained growth that promotes quality of life improvements, both from practical and academic perspectives. While some solutions, such as business expansion, educational excellence and basic health and environmental safety, seem clear, the implementation of these solutions encounters challenges as communities grow. In other cases, conventional solutions to development challenges just do not work in the dynamic economic environment of the 21st century.

As technology, the domestic economic and business landscape, and the environment continue to change rapidly, there is a clear need for innovative approaches to the economic, health, and social challenges of the 21st century. To fulfill these challenges, the Center develops and employs approaches that: are grounded in creative and exacting program design; grow from a sound analytical provenance; survive rigorous field testing and application; and produce measurable and transferrable results.

The Ludwig Center has assembled a unique, interdisciplinary team of faculty and participating students from across the Yale community. Centered around its two core components--the Community and Economic Development Clinic and the Education Adequacy Project Clinic personnel are drawn primarily from the Law School and the School of Management, but also from such Yale institutions as the Schools of Public Health, Medicine, and Forestry. These experts serve as active members of and advisors to the Ludwig Center's research and programs. The Ludwig Center collaborates with nonprofit organization, for-profit social ventures, social entrepreneurs, and government entities to develop its research and programs. Examples of some of its recent publications can be found here.

The Ludwig Center uses a range of traditional and new media to promote its research and project design. Core and affiliate faculty have a platform from which to discuss, promote, and disseminate their scholarship. Students gain the opportunity to explore the role of policy advocacy and communications strategies in advancing economic development and social innovation. The Center’s Law and Social Innovation Podcast Series is just one example of this type of advocacy.

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to the
Law and Social Innovation Podcast series.