Global Girl

Project Botswana built a day care.

The Global Girls, and Boys, of Paideia School

Growing up in in-town Atlanta, GA, I went to a small K-12 school called Paideia School. (Yes, I went to the same school for 15 years of my life.) I continue to become amazed by what this school has taught me about philanthorpy, putting yourself out there, and daring to dream that the world can be a better place if we work for it.

Every year the school publishes a journal called the “Paideia Schoolbook: a Journal for Education.” This summer’s edition confirmed my belief that Paideia teaches people to get out in the world and do something. The journal published six stories from six alumni participating in development projects around the world. These stories range from using Ultimate Frisbee to help peace building efforts in Israel and Palestine, to using cell phones in Africa to help health-care providers treat HIV/AIDS.

Prentiss Darden, a Paideia alum and graduate of Lewis and Clark College in Portland Oregon, has been in Southern Africa for the past two months. She works on Project Botswana, which proposes the solution to treatment adherence for people taking ARVs for HIV by developing a s system that sends text messages as a reminder for people to take these medicines. The text messages can also be used by the patients as a means to get medical advice and help. Prentiss’s description of why she was inspired to take part in this project really touched me, and so I would like to share it with you all:

A True Global Citizen:

“While some people may wonder why in the world I am attracted to working in the area of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, I realize that everyone in the world is interdependent. The more I travel, the more I realize that the world is a small place and we are all interconnected…As much as some people think that out nations and states are separated and that there is a first world and a third world, these constructions are artificial. Belief in the concreteness of such imaginary notions is dangerous…I feel strongly about about giving attention to people with fewer resources because by strengthening these areas, the whole becomes stronger. It is essential that we understand the holistic nature of the world as we face increasing challenges from a growing population and diminishing natural resource.”

This is a true description of what it means to be a citizen of the world.

Other Paideia alumni who are taking part in great projects are:

• Jeffrey Holtzberg is learning about health-care and life in rural India.
• Jeffrey Austin is in Liberia running a community-based justice program with the Carter Center.
• Ben Klein is in his second year as a Peace Corps Volunteer working on education in Lesotho.
• Jessie Kaplan is in Nepal working on education for Student Partnerships Worldwide.
• Moses Rifkin and Miranda Ross worked on a project “Ultimate for Peace” in Isreal and Palestine playing to promote peace amongst the youth in the region.

Currently I don’t have a link or permission to post the full PDF stories, but as soon as I get an update I will post it on the site! Keep a look out.

A Global Girl Introduction to a Great NGO, Catalytic Communities, and an Inspiring “Solution” Database, WiserEarth

Global Girl's Creation of the Conceptual Framework: An International Development Tool

Theresa Williamson, the director of Catalytic Communities, when explaining the work that her NGO does,  brought up an extremely important view of how to look at all of the efforts of non-profit and community action groups: We need to look at NGO/Non-profit efforts in terms of their “solutions” and share these solutions in the model of best practices.

Look at non-profit efforts in terms of solutions, this seems obvious does it not?

I know it seems simple, but on the ground the “solutions” often get lost and don’t get recorded. And certainly, if the solutions get lost, you better believe the failures cannot be found -No NGO wants to publish a huge failure. Even so, it is important to share solutions to teach people what to do and failures to teach people what NOT to do. It occurs too often that potentially great solutions get lost in implementation to the point that the efforts no longer reflect the problems, and thus “solutions” become jumbled and often miss crucial pieces.

My professor from last year, and director of the Payson Center, Dr. Eamon Kelly would call this a break down in the “conceptual framework.” You can see a brief description of the conceptual framework in the image above.

Theresa is documenting a huge database of solutions that Catalytic Communities has collected over the years and putting them in the database, WiserEarth. This is a database filled with the various efforts in communities around the world. (And it was recently translated into Portuguese for all you Portuguese speakers.) I invite you to take a look at this interesting community here, plus you can follow them on twitter with the user name   WiserEarth.

Global Girl Endorses Rio’s Candidacy for 2016 Olympics! Go Rio2016!

I grew up in Atlanta, GA, which hosted the 1996 Olympic Games, and so I saw first hand the transition that Atlanta experienced with all the opportunities, development due to hosting the Olympics. Atlanta grew both economically and in size, which has made people call it the “New York of the South.” Atlanta marked itself on the map.

So for Rio de Janeiro, I really wish the city this same opportunity (maybe not the growth in population, since Rio is already huge!). I do have my fears that an Olympics in Rio could encourage the government to instate make-shift harmful policies in order to get the city ready for the games: The main concern would be removing chunks of residents and moving them out to the outskirts of Rio. Honestly, this did happen in Atlanta during its Olympic Games: All the housing projects around the “Olympic Stadium,” which is now Turner Field, were destroyed and those residents were relocated to West Atlanta.

There is a post about the potential downfalls of Rio’s Olympic Games: “Olimpíadas 2016 no Rio de Janeiro. A cidade ganha um presente ou um abacaxi?”See it here (in Portuguese).

But I believe that we can fight the fight one step at a time, first let’s get the games in Rio! It would be the first time that the Olympics would be in South America, and let’s admit South America deserves a chance! (Much more than Chicago or Madrid. Global Girl supports Rio’s 2016 bid. The decision will be announced in October, so we have a month left to spread the word. See the official Rio2016 video:

The Olympics need to be in the Cidade Maravilhosa!

(Thanks to the blog Rio Temporada for posting the video and “tweeting” it!)

Global Girl Visits the Favela Asa Branca

We have seen a lot of research about what makes a successful leader, but most concentrates on business or educational leadership rather than community leadership. In many ways, being a community leader in Rio de Janeiro really separates the strong leaders from the weak: The challenges of resources, gaining trust amongst people in the community, and all the clientelistic relationships from state and non-state actors that demand leaders to assume a diplomatic type position.

I thought it would be interesting to see the lessons that I learned from a carioca community leader. What are the lessons we can learn from those who fill some of the most difficult leadership positions?

Theresa Williamson,  the director of NGO Catalytic Communities, (see their profile in WiserEarth here), introduced me to Bezerra who lives in a small and rather new community (25 years old), Asa Branca, in the West Zone of Rio de Janeiro. (To see pictures of the community, click here!).

Bezerra and two boys

Bezerra has been the President of the Residents’ Association for most of the last 12 years. His case is unique, not only because Asa Branca is a fairly new community, but also because Bezerra has been able to motivate his community together to carry out unique projects such as: obtaining a sewerage system; improving access to water; creating a community recreational space; increasing environmental awareness; organizing community first-aid training; and more.

This is what I learned: Continue Reading to See Bezerra’s Lessons

Group of us volunteers in Brazil

Global Girl’s Perspectives on Voluntourism:

Yesterday a great group of researchers working with Bianca Freire-Medeiros interviewed me yesterday about my experience with voluntourism. Two questions stuck out as being really thought provoking.

When you say, voluntourism can “open up your eyes,” open up your eyes to what?

She also asked me if I felt some sort of repercussion for the fact that I came all the way to Brazil to participate in voluntourism, however I was living in a city (New Orleans) that was also needing a lot of volunteers. I said that I didn’t feel guilty, because I was participating in rebuilding New Orleans. I went out and gutted houses, I worked to rebuild the city in a more environmentally aware way, and I moved back and supported the city economically.

Reading this article from an interesting women, Alexia Nestora, (and a new person to follow on Twitter!) who worked directly with voluntourism programs wrote an article about a foundation, Farther Foundation, that picks people from lower income housing and gives them the opportunity to volunteer abroad. This gave me another reason why voluntourism can be really beneficial.

When you are living in your world, in your day to day life, it is almost harder to look beyond the four walls of your own life and see what is going on all around you. When volunteering abroad in a different culture, every experience is vivid. You are really aware of your surroundings, because everything is new. After volunteering abroad and really paying attention to the surroundings and all the aspects that occur daily that directly or indirectly affect the lives inside one’s own “personal four walls,” helps that person become more aware of these aspects in their own life. This person can then go back to their own culture and compare their new experience with their home life, and maybe even motivate that person to change daily aspects of their home life in order to have positive benefits on their own community. Maybe that is what I mean when I say, “Voluntourism can open up your eyes.”

Have any of you participated in “Voluntourism?” Did it “open your eyes?” If so, how did it open them, and to see what? I’d love to know what you all think!

So, I had a great day today: First, I was able to meet such a nice Brazilian girl who works on a team of researchers studying voluntourism; Then I got to listen to a short lecture summing up some of their research by another nice researcher; Finally, I met the professor heading up the research herself!

After hearing their lecture and comparing their research to my own perspectives and experiences, I decided to write out the five things that I would tell a future voluntourist and share them with you all! Some of these aspects have a little more to do with the specific case of voluntourism in Brazil, but most can be applied universally.

Click here to read the advice!

The World Bank

So in the late afternoon we had our last meeting. I must confess, I was a little nervous, since all of us were exhausted, that we wouldn’t make it through the meeting without making a horrible impression having dozing off students listen to these important people. Fortunately, however, the meeting was so interesting that we all not only stayed awake, but were on the edge of our seats. It was the icing on the cake of the day.

Ronald MacLean-Abaroa, Senior Governance & Decentralization Specialist, the World Bank Institute (WBISD) and Former Mayor of La Paz, Bolivia.
Angelica Silvero, Coordinator, Visitors Briefings Program

Keep reading to find out more…

Organization of American States

We had a little time between our meeting with the IDB and the meeting with the OAS and so we walked around, did some sightseeing, and had lunch. After, we were back at it and this time at the OAS. Here’s who we met:

Pablo Zúñiga, Director Department for State Modernization and Governance, Secretariat for Political Affairs Director
Jorge Baxter, Coordinator Inter-American Program on Education for Democratic Values and Practices.

These men gave our group an overview of the OAS, showing that it was the oldest regional organization that traces its roots all the way back to the Pan-Americanism ideals of Simon Bolivar. They explained that it was an inter-American system pulling together multilateral solution for hemispheric problems. They also explained that the organization provides technical cooperation among the Member State countries on key issues.

This meeting revealed that one of the key issues of the OAS is the promotion of democracy, with due respect for non-intervention. Democracy really became a fundamental part of the OAS in Santiago, Chile in 1991. In this meeting the resolution 1080, “Representative Democracy.”

Continue Reading…

The Inter-American Development Bank

8:00am. The first meeting of the day bright and early. We look so professional outside the IDB building (or BDI since most people that work there seem to be Spanish Speakers!).

Vicente Fretes Cibils, Chief Fiscal and Municipal Management Division;
Rafael de la Cruz y Mauricio Silva.

The IDB has a difficult balance to handle between the goals of international development and the goals of a bank; the objectives of these two components are not always the same and they often contradict.

These men all worked for the Fiscal Municipal Management (FMM) department of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Vincente Fretes Cibilis being the head of this department. They explained to us that the IDB is a multilateral development bank. The capital of the bank mostly comes from the United States, Asia, Europe and a little from Latin America and the Caribbean, although the principal beneficiaries are Latin America and the Caribbean. Continue Reading…

One of our professors, Martin Mendoza, set up some once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for the Jamaican delegation (a.k.a. us Tulane students representing Jamaica in the Model OAS).

We had the privilege to meet people working with the Inter-American Development Bank who were, among many things, undertaking large projects to decentralize Latin America and improve urban standards of living. We also met people working with the Organization of American States, specifically in the Department for State Modernization and Governance and in the Inter-American Program for Education on Democratic Values and Practices.

I saved the best for last. We got to meet with a former mayor of La Paz Bolivia who currently works at the World Bank, Ronald MacLean-Aboroa. During his terms he managed to quell rapidly growing corruption in the municipal government. He shed a little light to how he managed to undertake this task, and what he learned from his experiences. Stay tuned for the posts about the people we met!