NGK Cultural Bridge Fellowship 2006

Wow – It is such a great feeling to have finished my first year of the MPA/ID program and to have left Boston for Bogotá. I was last here in Colombia in 2004 and have been looking forward to getting back ever since.

In this, my first ever blog entry, I want to provide a brief overview of Colombia and the work I will be undertaking. I am here for 10 weeks – 8 weeks working in the Congress of Colombia and another two weeks of traveling.

Colombia

Colombia is situated in the north of South America with coastlines on both the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea (see attached maps).

The population is approximately 43 million, consisting of 58% mestizo, 20% white, 14% mulatto, 4% black, 3% mixed black-Amerindian and 1% Amerindian. Ninety per cent of the population identifies themselves as being Catholic.

I have had so many great experiences with different Colombians during past visits and my opinion is that they are a wonderful mix between the more reserved Andean cultures to the south and the more gregarious Caribbean cultures to the north. Whatever it is, it makes for a very friendly and interested people.

From a development perspective, GDP per capita (ppp) in Colombia is $7,100 (compared with $31,900 for Australia, $41,800 for the US and $2,900 for Bolivia), with economic growth of 5.1% during 2005. The poorest 10% of households control 7.9% of total household income and the richest 10% control 34.3%. The Colombian Government estimates that 49.2% of Colombians are living in poverty.

Principal exports include petroleum, cafe, coal, cut flowers and apparel.

More information on Colombia can be found at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/co.html

Internship

The internship that I am undertaking is with Senator Rafael Pardo of the Congress of Colombia and requires that I analyze different peace policies from an economic perspective. The current approach to securing peace has often been examined/criticized from a human rights perspective, but there is little information on the economic impact of different policies. The results of the internship should be interesting to the Colombian Government, academics, donor organizations and NGOs.

The internship appealed to me because it will enable me to apply the economics training that I have undertaken in the MPA/ID program during this year. I have always worked in the private sector so I am also really looking forward to getting a taste of political life. With this in mind, it is a really interesting time to be in Colombia. The current President (Álvaro Uribe) amended the Constitution last year so as to permit him to run for another term. He won the next election only a couple of days ago (in the first round) with a 62% majority and a mandate to continue his approach to combating each of the guerrilla and the paramilitary groups.

Other objectives that I hope to fulfil over the next couple of months include:

• Learning more about development issues in areas suffering from armed conflict.
• Developing my Spanish to the point where I can work in a professional capacity in Spanish-speaking countries.
• Getting to know as many different people as I can, hopefully from the public and private sectors, from areas affected by the conflict, military personnel, and others trying to cope with living in a relatively insecure environment.
• Finalizing a topic for my second year policy analysis thesis.

NGK Cultural Bridge Fellowship

As a means of enhancing this internship experience, I was fortunate enough to be accepted as a Nancy Germeshausen Klavans Cultural Bridge Fellow. This program is managed by the Kennedy School’s Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP) and will involve me meeting regularly with a female peace builder during the course of my internship, as well as working to increase the participation of women in conflict-stricken areas (such as Colombia).

As part of this program, I will keep a group of friends and colleagues informed as to how my internship is progressing through this blog. I also hope to give a more detailed presentation when I return to the Kennedy School in the fall.

The peace builder with whom I will be working is currently traveling in Chile and I hope to be able to provide more information on her, as well as Senator Pardo, after we meet next week.

Anyway, enough for now.  Any comments and questions will be much appreciated!

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 31st, 2006 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.