Tag: gender equality

Lend Me Your Ears

On By saigonsaysIn Equality, Humankind, International Development, Uncategorized, Women's Empowerment3 Comments
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Hoa Binh Province, rural Vietnam

Christmas is coming and there’s no stopping it. Even here in Saigon the Vietnamese have started to embrace what has become an indulgent festival of consumption, celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.

And, at this time every year, people like me pen blogs like this one, instigated to push a perspective your way. People like me who (you’ll soon enough not be surprised to read) have just spent half my week up in rural Vietnam, meeting local communities.

So, what’s the perspective I’m peddling ? Well, no doubt by the end of this post I will have worked it out…    Continue reading “Lend Me Your Ears” →

Sri Lanka: preparing for a future without international aid

On By saigonsaysIn International DevelopmentLeave a comment
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“Up-country” on a Sri Lankan tea estate

During what was recently my fifth visit to Sri Lanka in as many years, my taxi driver picked me up at the airport in a Honda Prius, with the air conditioning set to “glacial” and the FM stereo blaring out 1990’s classics.

On closer inspection over the course of the next eight days spent in Colombo, and also “up-country” on tea estates, it was clear that not every aspect of the nation was motoring on hybrid fuel and gyrating to the sounds of Take That. However, change is occurring here, for a country still only five years free from a long standing and debilitating civil war. The question remains, how positive might that change be for every Sri Lanka citizen, and how can inclusive growth for all be created in the future?

With Honda Prius taxis also comes an array of international fast-food joints, peppering the main streets of the capital, and beyond, and ensuring Sri Lanka’s “middle income” status and advancement towards that end goal to which so many Asian cities are now succumbing: modernisation. Continue reading “Sri Lanka: preparing for a future without international aid” →

True power lies within

On By saigonsaysIn Equality, HumankindLeave a comment
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The dizzying heights of Singapore’s most powerful

And so to Singapore last week, for CARE’s third successive experience of partnering the annual “Sharing Value Asia” Forum – this year attracting a 30% uplift in delegates since the 2013 event, and focusing on what is becoming a fast emerging consensus around how the “Power of Many” may yet be our best ticket to solving some of the region’s pressing social and environmental dilemmas.

I have written before about “cross-sector” collaboration and partnerships. About forging alliances with shared objectives where the private, public and NGO sectors can work together, realising mutually beneficial outcomes.

This flavour of narrative was once more in play in Singapore, and I welcome that. Continue reading “True power lies within” →

It’s Inclusion, stupid

On By saigonsaysIn Equality, Humankind, Well-BeingLeave a comment

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As so to Singapore, fleetingly, to speak yesterday at Diageo’s inaugural “Women in Hospitality and Tourism in Asia” Conference.

As an $80bn turnover corporation, Diageo were not satisfied with only launching a daytime event, comprising of a range of speeches and panel sessions looking at the women’s empowerment agenda within their own industry, no, they also pulled together the first ever women’s empowerment “Journalist Awards” the very same evening.

Hats off to them for a well organised – and at times, genuinely inspiring – watershed day for a company such as theirs, the largest alcohol beverage company in the world, who have spent the past 18 months recasting their aspirations in society around “empowering women through learning.”

CARE have been supporting these efforts, through skills training and micro-finance initiatives in Nepal and Sri Lanka, and we are also discussing how to use our own experiences over the past 10 years in Cambodia, where we have successfully lobbied the government and the private sector to implement a more responsible Code of Conduct for brewers and drinks companies who distribute their products at a local level, largely employing women as beer sellers. Continue reading “It’s Inclusion, stupid” →

Engendering change

On By saigonsaysIn HumankindLeave a comment
Looking beyond Mars and Venus
How do we move from the mundane of the Mars-Venus analogy?

I’ve just read this: http://blogs.cfr.org/development-channel/2013/10/16/emerging-voices-henriette-kolb-on-gender-equality-and-economic-growth/ which lays out some compelling evidence making the case for how gender equality and economic growth are linked.

Linked positively, that is.

I work for CARE International, and we have made the case ourselves, and continue to do so in the specific area of work that I have been attached to for the last seven years, namely that of engaging business and markets in our precious “development agenda”. Continue reading “Engendering change” →