Dear Pitaconsumers!
This coming Sunday marks our 4th “Mind Your Body; Mind Your Stress” workshop in the networking series combining yoga with social media tips. We are now offering a special student discount of $5 off to participate!
What Does Shared Prosperity Take? #DoGood #ConsciousCapitalism
Two weeks ago, the World Bank convened its annual civil society organizations meetings to discuss “Shared Prosperity” and what it takes. We ask again: What does it take for shared prosperity? We respond: “Doing Good” plus “Conscious capitalism”.
Because it is the week of Washington, DC’s “Do Good Summit”, which organizes workshops for local DC businesses looking to do good, we would like to repost a piece about civil societies in the Middle East and North Africa region. In mid-April, over 551 Civil Society Organizations visited DC to participate in the Annual World Bank-IMF Spring meetings. The following are PITAPOLICY Founder’s thoughts…
Shared Prosperity Needs More Face to Face Engagement, Not Just Online
By: Mehrunisa Qayyum
“It takes civil society to engage on solutions,” shared Lotfi Maktouf, who founded Al Madanya, which is a Tunisian-based nonprofit that helps address the number one challenge in Tunisia, youth unemployment. Through Al Madanya’s simple intervention, subsidizing driver’s license training, youth obtain the means to earn a driver’s license which can lead to a job — or at least provide the identity card they need for other types of employment. I could not help but think that this year’s World Bank theme for “Shared Prosperity” had to be somewhat inspired from the analysis and reports coming from the Middle East and North Africa division that focused on inclusiveness for development. Current World Bank President, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, repeatedly cushioned each recommendation to support “Shared Prosperity” as the end-goal. Shared prosperity also served as a way to include civil society across all regions regarding extreme poverty, education, and climate change.
#ItTakes Civil Society Organizations
Combined with the 2013 meeting’s “hashtag”, which is the term for a social media meme, #ItTakes, it was easy to enlist civil society organizations among the online audience to comment. For social media followers, there was certainly much online discussion the Annual World Bank-International Monetary Fund (IMF) Spring Meetings that primarily focused on the Tunisian and Egyptian IMF loan decisions, rather than the other widely used hashtag “#educationfirst” throughout the week-long online/offline discussions.
During the meetings, 551 representatives from Civil Society Organizations arrived in Washington, D.C. to participate in about sixty CSO sessions that engage on better program management to partnering with the United Nations for Millennium Development Goal projects, like sanitation and education. Traveling to Washington, D.C., let alone, the U.S. is expensive. So it is understandable that over 20 percent of the CSO representatives come from the U.S. However, even if one were to subtract 100 of those American CSO reps from the total, only 23 of 451 representatives came from the Middle East & North Africa region itself.
Among MENA countries, those represented, came from some countries going through economic and political transition, like Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt. Civil society institutions who were unable to attend, observed and questioned from Tunisia, like Twitter user, Saida Manoubia who asked over Twitter as @khaffousa: “if there could be growth without development, and how did #tunisia achieve the growth he is talking about?”
Yet, no civil society [Click here to continue…]
