Blog Post

From May 1 to 3, for the first time, the United States hosted World Press Freedom Day, an event inspired by African journalists. Every day around the globe free expression is under threat.  For the champions of a free media, the dates, places and people may change but not the objective. Twenty years ago it was the Soviet Union’s dictatorship and South Africa’s apartheid that was disintegrating; today another revolution is transforming the Middle East.  Courageous journalists, advocates, and new media pioneers proclaimed a single persistent message at this year’s event: freedom of expression is indispensable to democratic growth.

Donors and implementers who assisted Chileans in the aftermath of the 2010, 8.8-magnitude earthquake recently stood on stage at an event in Santiago organized by the Telecentre.org Foundation in front of representatives from 50 telecentre networks of 100 countries, to share ways information and communication technologies (ICT) helped ease the pain of the disaster. As is typical in crisis situations,utilities and communications were down, government offices were closed, if not destroyed, and media outlets were not broadcasting, leaving a field of misinformation open and alarming an already distraught population.

The smile, stickers and Halloween candy I’d brought as a USRVI volunteer weren’t enough. Sasha needed much more than I could give in just one hour, and I had no idea where to start. At 15, he had run away from the orphanage to go home—many children in Russian state institutions have at least one living parent—and found things there in a state of chaos. Orphanage staff heard he was begging on the local electrichka train, found him and brought him back.

While university scholarships provided to Kazakhstan’s disadvantaged youth will certainly help them towards brighter futures, there is still an important component necessary for becoming an empowered and successful individual. That piece is the development of the life skills necessary in order to “effectively improve the economic and social situations of their families, communities, and nation."

As aid budgets shrink, donors want to see more than just the immediate impact of their dollars – they want to know an investment will be sustainable, continuing to affect people’s lives for years to come. To achieve sustainability, a project has to introduce tools that truly serve local community needs. That’s what I love the most about our Youth Theater for Peace (YTP) programs—they present a flexible methodology, Drama for Conflict Transformation (DCT), which beneficiaries can use to address a range of conflict issues they feel are relevant locally.

Capturing the real impact of youth development projects that aim to change attitudes and behaviors is a challenge—it’s not found in numbers of people trained or workshops held. At a recent panel called Beyond the Numbers: Storytelling as a Youth Development Evaluation Tool, hosted by the Society for International Development – Washington’s Youth in Development Workgroup at IREX’s headquarters, I learned about two creative, quantifiable M&E techniques that can strengthen a mixed-method evaluation plan.

As World Press Freedom Day approaches and interest in ongoing popular uprisings in the Middle East garner well-deserved attention in the press, we should not forget how the digital revolution continues to upend traditional notions of media (and traditional notions of state control over the media) all over the globe.

I just came home from Rwanda, Liberia, Romania and Ukraine. What do these countries have in common you ask and why is IREX focusing on them right now? Each one of these countries is in transition from a difficult past to a hoped-for brighter future. Each one of these countries is in a better position now than in over a generation to make genuine progress toward the goals they’ve set for themselves. Each has its own unique set of challenges, naturally.

Interviewing victims of trafficking and their rescuers is difficult work. There are few happy endings. However, occasionally one meets someone who emerges from unspeakable suffering with courage, clarity, and wisdom. Marina is such a woman.

Bringing Youth Government to Rural Russia The longer I live in Russia, the more I see similarities with the United States. Then there are moments where I am reminded of the tremendous differences. One of these moments happened last week while I was attending a youth government training in Kotovsk, a town of about 27,000 people in Tambov, one of the more conservative regions of Russia. The training was part of the USAID-funded Youth Development Competencies Program (YDCP), which in its fourth year is working to empower youth and effect change in youth policy in three Russian regions, including Tambov.