The GP Connect team was gathered during Thursday lunch excited not just by the promise of food but of the possibility of a new partnership.

We met with two smart and engaging young women meeting us on behalf of the Youth to Youth (Y2Y) community of the World Bank, a group that focuses on bringing up and addressing issues regarding youth not only in the World Bank but across the world. The main topic was the upcoming Global Youth Conference 2012, a yearly event and one of the main projects of the Y2Y where the main objective is not only to acknowledge and provide information about present issues affecting youth today but to facilitate tangible opportunities for action.

Proving that GP Connect! is an organization of action, the GP Connect team began pitching ideas for outreach and potential guests, more than willing to collaborate. It was amazing and encouraging to see a mutual exchange of ideas. Already I cannot wait for what promises to be a very successful collaboration on such a significant project.

By Elizabeth Carrera 

It is at the Global Peace Convention in Korea (November 28-30, 2011) that I finally had the chance to meet Saroj Kumal Khanal, the Executive Director of Service For Peace in Nepal. In previous encounters, I had only heard about the initiatives that he was running through third party persons and mostly on the Global Team calls that Service For Peace and Global Peace Connect team members participate in on a weekly basis.  

Now at the Convention I had the opportunity to not only meet him but to also hear about the projects and initiatives in Nepal from the horse’s mouth as Saroj shared a presentation on the initiatives they were running. As Saroj speaks, he does it with such humility but also with so much passion and you can see the zeal, the determination and the commitment to the success of these initiatives. And as I listened, I could not help but think what a great model of community driven development this was. Saroj was able to share with us four great examples of initiatives that I would like to highlight in this article.

First, was on a literacy program focused on women in a rural poor community in Nepal that has the women empowering themselves and driving its development. I hope to share in more depth about this initiative that truly stood out for me.

Second, was on a goat scholarship program; students are provided with a goat that has the potential to be impregnated and the first two kids that are birthed are invested back to the project and those birthed thereafter remain in the custody of the student and their family.

Third, was a potato farming project that involves the larger community with the intention to increase productivity levels.  The community itself provides the land and the organization provides seed money to undertake the farming.

Fourth, is an initiative towards sustaining the initiatives and increasing their scale-ability by initiating a fundraising effort called ‘the power of one rupee’ that also invites the participation of all community members to give as little as one rupee towards supporting these community initiatives.

It was important to note that among the highlights during one of the session at the Convention on “Empowering citizens in Community Driven Development” emphasized on ensuring that there was ownership of the development within the community, the need to start at a small scale and once successful, begin to scale-up and the role that new innovative strategies can play in scaling up community driven initiatives that were working.

I found Saroj’s initiatives well within this criterion especially in the ownership and in starting at a manageable scale.  In a follow-up article, I hope to highlight in depth one of the initiatives that really stood out for me — the woman to woman literacy program that was changing the lives of poor rural women in Nepal and had experienced growth through their very own efforts.

By Becky Gitonga

Will this high level forum help save the world? I don’t know for sure but it is a step in the right direction.

The GP Connect! Social media team comprised of Atlas Corps Fellow and IT Director Phil Mlanda and Becky Gitonga a consultant with GP Connect! were in attendance for the Busan conference in Seoul, Korea hosting a twitter fall and sharing provocative questions. Where does GP Connect! fill in during the conference? We hope to become players in the development arena. I mean that our model, the Community Driven Development model will hopefully help the aid community focus funding in a sustainable and effective manner. Also in attendance to the conference was the President of Service for Peace Dr. Charles Phillips and Atlas Corps Fellow Varun Sood the Director of Strategy and Operations. One of the major agenda’s of the conference is that major donor countries increase transparency in order to meet the UN’s millennium goals.

Busan is one of the final steps to completing the 2015-millennium goals. How will the development community get there? HLF4 is the incubator that will give birth to new ideas and partnerships to achieve living standards for the poorest people in the world. The north south model of developed countries has given way to developing countries joining the arena.

Developing countries, civil society and private donors are all contributors to lifting communities out of poverty. The goal of the Busan conference is to emphasize transparent engagement, real world solutions and the involvement of new partners to bring the promise of 2015.

For more information about the high-level forum, follow the discussions on twitter hashtags: #gpckorea11 & #HLF4

By Josephine Ona