Development Cooperation

UN Secretary General speaking on the Value of Partnerships to young people 

I may or may not have written it here before but as soon as I was conscious about United Nations Day celebrations in school, I knew I wanted to work for the United Nations. I was about ten years old. At the same time, I was equally smitten by food. 

Torn. An aunt based in Washington, D.C. told me to pursue a career that would feed me, then later on, I can pursue the culinary arts. Having brought up in a family that travels, traveling and inter-cultural affairs was the common aspect between the two. 

At 17, I decided to pursue political economy with the goal of becoming a Foreign Service Officer -- they were often the ones whom I thought liaised with and ended up at the UN. But as a participant of the International Youth Leadership Conference in early 2004, I had an epiphany: instead of international relations, I want to focus on development. 

But it wasn't until the devastating Thai Tsunami that I knew what I wanted to focus on: development cooperation and effectiveness. No one donor can provide all the help needed. And the donors need to work with the affected countries. Partnership is key. 

About eight years later, I'm thankful to have been one of the few to receive a scholarship from DAAD to study development management in Germany. The past two weeks, we had a lecturer from the German Development Institute on Democracy & Governance. Democratization, Regimes, Transition, Democracy Promotion. Due to my interest in development cooperation, I focused on the latter. It was just one of the most refreshing and interesting classes I've had so far. It may be conceptual on the surface but it's the mainstream development agenda that everybody encounters: elections, war on terrorism, corruption. 

The UN ascribes to democracy as a universal value, and the United States has also invested a lot of resources in promoting the values of democracy where deemed needed all over the world. The rest of Ban Ki Moon's speech can be found in this link,  where he highlighted the need for the UN and the US to work together towards achieving their common goals. 

"Let us think big.  Let us think together.  Everything I have seen as Secretary-General convinces me that no country will be able to address its national problems unless it engages internationally. And we will not address global problems unless each country plays its part" (Ban, 2012)."

I hope someday, I can contribute to the development cooperation landscape professionally. There is so much to be done. I hope the next decade could be one where I can give and share more.