Workers with data skills are needed across the breadth of employment sectors and development is one such sector which has become increasingly data driven, e.g. the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are explicitly measurable and include a target to improve statistical capacity in and of itself. Higher education students studying a range of social science subject areas often aspire to a career in development: a fiercely competitive and rapidly changing sector, with the need for both ‘soft’ (e.g. cross-cultural collaboration) and ‘hard’ skills now emphasised, of which data analysis is an increasingly valued ‘hard’ skill. However, there is often resistance amongst social science students to develop data skills. Students’ resistance has been linked to a lack of confidence, particularly amongst students with a limited mathematical background and/or who have had bad experiences of mathematics teaching earlier in their education. However above and beyond concerns about ability, an additional key barrier to students’ engagement in data education is a simple lack of interest. The aim of this project is to tackle these challenges and resultant graduate skills deficit by creating a team of partner universities to collaboratively develop learning and teaching materials which meet the current and anticipated future data skill requirements of development sector employers and enable lecturers to share expertise. The team is composed of four universities representing geographically and culturally diverse countries: University of Gloucestershire (UK), Gazi University (Turkey), University of Malta (Malta) and UNED (Spain). The learning and teaching resources developed through the project will closely align with the reality of working in the development sector, by exposing students to international collaboration and to working on real and pressing development issues, thus providing a clear link between the lecture hall and students’ desired careers. The specific objectives are:(1) Understand the nature of the current and anticipated future data skills deficit in the international development sector through expert interviews with key employers across partner countries. (2) Develop innovative social science instructor and student learning resources on data skills for international development informed by the findings from objective (1), based on real life scenarios which foster international collaboration between students, and benefiting from the varied expertise of project partners. (3) Pilot and evaluate the resources during a collaborative summer programme for students from across partner countries culminating in a visit to Luxembourg encompassing a tour of EUROSTAT, the European Union’s statistical agency, and an opportunity for students to share project findings and gain experience of international meetings. The pilot programme will include 5 undergraduate social science students from each partner country (20 in total). (4) Refine the materials based on student evaluations and tutor reflections and integrate the materials and collaborative student project work into the degree curriculum of partner universities, as well as making the resources freely available online for the benefit of the wider social science higher education community. The results of the project will be instructor and student handbooks on a new data skills for international development programme. These materials will have been piloted during the project and will be integrated into the curriculum at partner universities and available online for other universities to adopt. The project will also produce an academic peer reviewed paper and a blog on the nature of the data skills deficit in the international development sector. In addition, there will be a website, twitter account, webinar when the materials are launched online and partners will give presentations on the project at conferences so as to ensure the programme reaches a wide range of universities. The impacts of the project included enhanced employability amongst student participants in the summer pilot programme, as well as future students at partner universities who will benefit from this addition to their curriculum and students at other universities which adopt the programme. The project will also have an impact on partner university academics and other academics who adopt the programme by assisting them to broaden their curriculum and to provide specific career guidance to their students. In addition, the project will have an impact on employers in the international development, and more broadly social development, sector by growing the pool of graduates with data skills required for the current and future demands of the sector. Ultimately, this will also be beneficial to the clients of development organisations as the organisations will be better equipped to harness the power of data to further their cause.