This Week's Work Schedule

I'm leaving out miscellaneous tasks such as appointment and meeting coordination.

This week I have to finish up a public and media relations outline for World Food Corps Seedbank. Normally, these things don't take much time. It's simple enough to work from templates (the PR cat is out of the bag). But I'm also working as a coordinator for WFCS and I am increasingly convinced that regional and national coordinators for WFCS should be skilled public relations practitioners. There's quite a bit of strategic planning involved with coordinating a large state like California. The primary reason that my workload here is much bigger than normal for a coordinator is that I'm the first one. I don't have a map to follow or references to give. I'm in effect paving the path here, creating templates and blue prints. And I want the tools I create to be useful and efficient, transferable and applicable across a range of contexts.

I find myself working with lots of different organizations and infrastructures at the micro and macro levels: NGO's, government organizations, and education infrastructures. Yes, bureaucracies are that complicated. And a coordinator needs solid public relations skills to implement WFCS in schools efficiently and quickly.

I'm on the agenda for the next California School Garden meeting. Besides the posters I made for teaching children about WFCS, I have to create a power point presentation to teach teachers about implementing WFCS. This is, of course, related to a media kit I'm creating for WFCS. The same task accomplishes multiple goals.

All of these materials have to be approved by Dr. Van Cotthem. I spend a lot of time reading his news and research aggregator blog on desertification, drought and poverty. I also keep up with general news, government policies, and so on.

Strategic planning, forming key partnerships, and connecting synergies is also part of my work as a public relations practitioner. After I've completed my materials for WFCS I'm working on two papers about African continental development and another on regional development in Northwest Africa.

Algeria has emerged as one of the leaders in African continental development. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was invited to the G8 summit because of the country's role in The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) The five initiating heads of state were given a mandate by the African Union "to develop an integrated socio-economic development framework for Africa".

I'm reading lots of strategic plans, research materials, policy papers, etc.. that are relevant to these issues and frameworks.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) have changed the nature of development worldwide. The big hope for African development is turning the brain drain into brain circulation. All entities involved are more or less in agreement that it's absolutely vital to tap into diaspora networks.

In this context, UNIFEM, UNDP, the Office of the Special Coordinator for Africa and the Least Developed Countries (OSCAL), the UN ICT Task Force and the UN Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP) in collaboration with the Government of Uganda, plan to launch the initiative in Africa on the occasion of the second meeting of the Global Advisory Committee.

The outcome of the meeting in Kampala will be presented during the upcoming meeting of the UN ICT Taskforce, in September 2003, and will inform the ongoing process of the World Summit for the Information Society (WSIS).

Objectives

The main objective of the meeting is to launch the programme of action of the Digital Diaspora Initiative in Africa, expanding the constituency of support by bringing on board other stakeholders from governments, civil society, donors and the private sector; and forging synergy between the efforts of the GAC, DDNA and the Gender Caucus of the WSIS

What are diaspora networks? In layman terms they're basically people going back to help their country of origin. This is a very strong human drive, going back to help. A network gives structure to these endeavors. I'm thinking in very broad strokes here, the details will be fleshed out in my articles.

We know that the global zeitgeist to help Africa and to help Africa help itself is here. WFCS, G8, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Oprah Winfrey, various United Nations organizations, internal African organizations and diaspora networks.

When I think about strategic planning and forming key partnerships I think of all these entities and infrastructures as narrative arcs. When two of them come together there's a great story. A great story is compelling and credible because it's relevant to an audience, plausible and verifiable. When many of these elements connect synergies a great novel has been written, in essence we've captured the zeitgeist.