Monterey Institute Alumni Interview

A group of students and staff at the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS) interviewed me last month for a series on reconnecting and networking with Alumni.

President Tandja in Niger as a new Big Man?

My friend at Niger1.com posted an article about President Tandja of Niger. His constitutionally mandated second and final presidential term is up at the end of this year, and it's not clear whether or not he'll step down:

President accused of breaking his word in third term bid

He publicly stated that he would step down after the November elections and a new president is sworn in, but he's suddenly wanting to re-do the constitution, like so many other modern-day dictators, to remain in power.

I haven't followed Niger close enough to truly comment on his time there. I was disappointed with the way he handled the recent Tuareg rebellion; he could have taken a page from Malian president Toure's book and started talking to them right away instead of lumping them with terrorists and drug dealers. Niger is still in the bottom five on the UN Human Development Index, and 8 years is a long time - there could have been much more meaningful change during that time.

I don't know entirely what to think of this. I would bet the villagers of Niger would like Tandja to stay, they like his stability and he'll probably go down in Nigerien history as a great president like they perceived Kountche to be. But this definitely looks bad from a diplomatic/foreign policy perspective.

Gaston Kaba - Health APCD in Niger Retiring

Wrote this in tribute to my old Associate Peace Corps Director for Health in Niger - Gaston Kaba:

My wife Andrea and I were PCV's in Niger form 97-01. We were Ag volunteers so we didn't report directly to Gaston. However, we found him to be a very useful and helpful Nigerien to talk to, especially in the beginning before we really knew what we were doing. We were volunteer leaders during the second half of our service and I had the opportunity to install new Health PCV's in their villages with Gaston. He would always keep his cool - while PCV's would be getting themselves very worked up and upset over perceived misjustices or misunderstandings, Gaston would always be able to work things out. I think in time the PCVs would come to understand how much Gaston helped shape the enabling environment in their villages. Having Gaston on your team as a PCV helped give you that gravitas - of having an educated, respected, literate and fluent dotijo - vouching for you, so your villagers knew you weren't totally crazy.

I went to Gaston's office one day to ask for some Child Survival money - about $500 - for a garden well in my village. At the time in the late 90's he had a huge amount of money to spend on anything related to Child Survival. He asked me for a proposal, which I provided, and then I returned to my village for a couple of weeks. When I got back - he said - "I've got $3000 from the Rotary Club of Truckee for you - let me know how you can use it!" That money ended up continuing and expanding the Torodi team garden well project and the installation of at least 10 wells that year. And that's really just a drop in the bucket of the 13 years Gaston was Health APCD.

So - from the bottom of my heart - I thank Gaston for his service - Na Gode, Ay Sabu, Mi Yetti, Merci Beaucoup! Sannuka da Aiki sosai.

Defending Young and Inexperienced PCV's

I just read an interesting article on DevEx about a Peace Corps Volunteer in Zambia. The author is a volunteer with VSO in Zambia who is professionally blogging in DevEx about volunteering, and he has some good counter-arguments for those who disparage the Peace Corps for sending young and inexperienced PCV's to developing countries.

For anyone who has worked in development - you know that behavioral change takes a long, long time. Crockett - the author of the article - highlights that many development experts who disparage inexperienced PCV's wouldn't be able to hack it in the village for 2 days, let alone 2 years. And it takes a lot more than an afternoon presentation with free food to convince subsistence farmers to change their farming styles for the better.

In Niger - it was common to have a demonstration field. You get the village chief to cede some land to you for a couple of years so you can experiment with the new methods you are sent to teach. The novelty of a foreigner working in the fields already attracts attention; if you carefully practice what you were taught in training, you can really help people see, over time, that you can increase your millet yields and use compost effectively, for example.

The other thing is that it is more than just the work - it's the intangibles that count. Each PCV is an American Ambassador. They leave two years of stories behind and the villagers never forget "their American" or their Americans...

So as long as there is the money and the political will - we should remember that sending intelligent, articulate, and motivated young people (possibly without too much professional experience) to serve as PCV's in remote countries is not a waste of time.

My CV as Visualized by Many eyes

This is very cool, here's how a visual word-count of my CV looks after running it through IBM's "Many Eyes" website:

New Job, New Considerations

I started a new position today at my NGO, as an Associate Program Officer for Iraq. I will basically be backstopping a few of our programs in Iraq, from our HQ offices here by DC. We have hundreds of millions of dollars in programs in Iraq - this was a career opportunity that I could not pass up.

But I had to really think about it.

I've been a recruiter here for one year, in fact last week was my year anniversary. About 6 months ago I was pretty despondent and my work quality was dipping; I wasn't happy. So, I decided to work harder at making my environment better. I started trying to learn more about recruiting online, joining recruiter communities of practice - there are lots of websites and LinkedIn groups (especially). I also took on some non-traditional recruiting duties on my team, such as looking for new ways to use Social Networking to recruit. I was looking for ways to be better at what I was doing, and to like the way I was doing it.

Still, staring at CV's and reading cover letters all day is still tedious, and I still couldn't help but feel jealous when I would come across people I would see as contemporaries - people who looked to be about the same age and were doing what I wished I could be doing. It's hard to concentrate when you've got something on your mind that won't go away.

As my year mark approached, my boss's boss - our Chief Administrative Officer - had asked me to become an HR rep. I told her that my long term goal in this industry is to be involved with implementing programs, with an eye towards moving back to the field one day - perhaps in 10 years. She parked that in the back of her brain and then went off to Iraq for a few weeks to work with the staff there.

While she was there, she was talking with our Director of Iraq Programs (who was also on a business trip there to support her staff) and they discussed having more HQ support staff in place. Fortunately, my CAO brought me up, and it quickly filtered back to me at HQ. I was asked if I would be interested in working with the Iraq team. This would be my way out of the HR/Recruiting world - a way to finally get into programs.

There was one issue that initially hit me - I would have to occasionally go to Iraq.

That's what hit me first: Would I go to Iraq? My heart said YES! My head is about 80 percent yes, 10 percent no, the rest wavers. When I'm here at work, I'm fine. Staff are coming and going from Iraq all the time without incident. We've never lost any expatriate staff as far as I know. We spend more than 10 percent of our budget there on security. But still - you get that sinking feeling about getting caught in that one, rare instance.

It's worse that my parents have been visiting and they don't get it at all. They've never fully understood the international development field. It's just not really like joining some corporation where you work and progress for 30 years and then retire. Now adding in the possibility of me going to a country that conventional wisdom in America considers to be one of the most dangerous places on Earth is almost too much for them. But they're being brave and supportive.

My story is this - I couldn't spend my early 30's in the field managing projects, it wasn't in the cards. Now, I cannot go overseas because my older daughter really needs to be in the US where the local school district offers the developmental care that she has to have now or never. Since I want to stay in the international development field, and I've spent all this money and earned all these graduate degrees - I have to follow through with it. So the next calculated risk for me, in the absence of an ability to get field experience, is to take the first HQ-based programming job I can get, however it comes to me.

So now, I am an Associate Program Officer for Iraq. We'll see where it leads me, but that's how I decided to make the change.

State Funded Student Loans?

Got this article emailed to me through my UC San Diego Alumni email subscriptions...

University of California - UC Newsroom | State budget contains $115 million in new cuts for UC, stretches UC's total budget challenge to $450 million

Basically the UC system is going to have a huge operating deficit if they maintain current levels, they're going to have a $450 million shortfall of funding from the state. That's a mind boggling, huge amount of money, although I know the recent near-trillion-dollar stimulus has made us numb to the sheer size of these sums of money.

Basically, if the UC System wants to maintain current enrollment levels they'll have to raise tuition fees. My initial reaction to this is that students will be taking out larger student loans, which will be a direct transfer of money from the federal government to the UC system. Then, this debt will be bought by the various banks that are allowed to handle student loans (I'm thinking of the Stafford and Perkins Loans, since these are all I have experience with.)

Why not start issuing student loans at the state level? Is this done? In a way, this could help future revenue streams, as students will slowly pay them back with interest. Not that states need to become banks, but it's not like they aren't issuing bonds already, holding debt.

I'm not a credit expert so I don't claim to fully understand how it all works. But this might be worth considering.