David Kupp

Research Fellow

David has been teaching courses at Wycliffe College since 2009, and he directs the Community Development track of the Master of Theological Studies program. He is also senior partner at Kabisa International and at eCurious, where he helps NGOs with innovation and strategy, research and evaluation, and capacity building. He teaches as an adjunct faculty member in the Conrad Grebel / University of Waterloo Master of Peace and Conflict Studies, as well as in Humber College’s graduate diploma in International Development Management.

David is into complex and integrated tapestries—seeking to interweave vibrant faith, academic excellence and professional effectiveness into the worlds of social change, community development and aid. He is a lifelong student in the arts and sciences of organizational leadership and learning, community action-research, citizen advocacy, contextual theology and adult learning. Over the past 32 years he has had opportunity to be a listener, facilitator, manager, researcher and trainer with organizations, church agencies and humanitarian projects in 25 countries. In the previous decade David also greatly enjoyed co-facilitating with his global team a series of programming innovations across the 97 national partners of World Vision International.

David has authored academic, industry and popular publications in the fields of biblical studies, poverty and theology, global issues, faith-based humanitarian organizations, urbanization, community development, environment, gender and NGO management.

David is married to Ellen Ericson Kupp. She is Senior Partner at Kabisa International, where she manages projects in communications and organizational change across a range of local and international non-profits. Their latest Kabisa joint venture has birthed eCurious, an enterprise focused on the e-learning needs of social change organizations. David and Ellen have three adult children.

If you can’t find David, he’s somewhere in an urban community project with a group of students. Or he’s happily sweating another NGO through birth pangs into its next strategic era. (He also may have snuck off to his woodworking shop, or disappeared among the islands of Georgian Bay.)

• “Designing Urban Programs: Seven Challenges for NGOs” (forthcoming article).
• Co-author/producer, “Introduction to Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation for Child Well-Being” (e-module).
  
• “Opportunities and Challenges of Social Sustainability for Child Well-Being in North-East Thailand” (evaluation report).
• “Toxic or Transformational? The Future of Short-Term Development Missions” (workshop).
• “Creating Space for Faith? Positioning Our NGO along the Faith and Culture Continuum” (research paper).
• “Urban Aboriginal Peoples: Potential Prairie Partnerships for Child Well-Being” (research report).
• “‘Boys Only’: Exposing the Roots of Girl Child Troubles” (chapter).
• The Keys to the City: Finding New Doorways into Urban Transformation.