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Senator Richard Lugar Wins 2012 Commitment to Development Award

Senator Richard Lugar, long-time champion of US engagement with global development issues, is the 2012 winner of the Commitment to Development “Ideas in Action” Award, sponsored by the Center for Global Development and The FP Group, the publishers of Foreign Policy. The Commitment to Development “Ideas in Action” Award honors an individual or organization that has made a significant contribution to changing the attitudes, policies, and/or practices of the rich world toward the developing world. Members of the selection committee will present this year’s award to Senator Lugar during a public event January 29^th, 2013.

“For four decades Senator Lugar has deployed his remarkable statesmanship to overcome partisan divides and enact smart US policies that support widely shared global prosperity,” said CGD president Nancy Birdsall.

Most recently, through his work on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Lugar helped create the foundation for a strong US development strategy, introducing legislation that promotes accountability and transparency in US foreign assistance programs.

Senator Lugar championed US efforts against global hunger, sponsoring legislation that would re-orient US foreign assistance programs to focus on promoting food security and rural development in countries with large, chronically hungry populations.  He has also dedicated his time and energy to understanding how the international financial institutions could reform to better meet the needs and evolving standards of the post-financial crisis world.

Senator Lugar is the senior senator from Indiana and currently the most senior Republican in the Senate, having served for six terms. Prior to serving in the senate, Senator Lugar served in the US Navy, on the Indianapolis Board of School Commissioners, and as mayor of Indianapolis. He was defeated in the GOP primary this year and will step down from the US Senate in January 2013.

Previous winners of the Commitment to Development Award include: the European ministers of international development who constitute the Utstein Group (2003); Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair Campaign (2004); then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown (2005), then-U.S. Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) (2006), Global Witness (2007), the ONE Campaign (2008), Diego Hidalgo Schnur (2009), Publish What You Pay (2010), and former president of the International Center for Research on Women Geeta Rao Gupta (2011).

A Generation of Global Citizens: Craig Kielburger’s Keynote Address

By Nina Carduner

Award winning Canadian activist for children’s rights, Craig Kielburger gave the closing keynote speech of this year’s Global Washington conference. He opened with his own favorite moment from today’s agenda: the fast-pitch session, in which eleven organizations gave a two-minute presentation of their priorities and activities.  “It was an extraordinary moment,” Kielburger said. He then went on to talk more about his work in advocating for the rights of children, in North America and across the world.

Kielburger’s first inspiration came when, as a 12 year-old boy, he read a newspaper article about a 12 year old laborer boy killed in Pakistan. He organized his friends in school; they started a small group called Free the Children, and worked to make a difference for children across the globe. They quickly ran into their first barrier: since they were all children, most non-profit organizations did not take them seriously. In fact, one group they called said that if they really want to help, they could go find their parents’ credit cards. This early experience has fueled his work to empower children all over the world to feel they can make a difference.

Empowering youth has been a consistent theme for Kielburger. The importance of his work was underscored when, as a teenager, he received an extraordinary call  from the Dalai Lama, who invited Kielburger to a conference and a diverse group of international voices to discuss and answer one question: “what is the single greatest challenge facing our world?”

Every answer from poverty to climate change was dismissed as simply a matter of will to solve. After days of discussion and deliberation, the group came up with the answer. They decided that the world’s single greatest challenge was a lack of political will. Kielburger challenged the attendees of today’s conference to ask themselves, “how do we raise a generation so that every single person in the world can recognize that they, too, have be part of this movement toward social change?”

One of Kielburger’s current projects to answer this question is a multi-location event called We Day, where 20,000 children and youth of all ages convene to be inspired by change makers, popular musical acts, celebrities, and world leaders. Each attendee earns a ticket for this special event through local and global service. Essentially, although tickets are free, the attendees must donate time, energy, and enthusiasm to a cause of their choice. To date, We Day has been a regular event in Canada and various parts of the world. Seattle will be the first stop on We Day’s US tour in March, 2013.

In closing, Kielburger told the story of a Quechua word “minga,” which is the coming together of people for the collective good. When he learned this word on a trip to Ecuador, he couldn’t answer a local woman who asked him for an equivalent word in English. To that effect, he emphasized the need for “mingas” in families, schools, and around to world, but we also need mingas in the non-profit world to move “from silos to impact.”

As a final theme to an inspiring day of dialogue, interaction, and connection, Kielburger encourage the audience to continue their work. “It’s time to raise a generation of global citizens.”

2012 Global Hero Award: Therese Caouette

By Nina Carduner

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn presented the second annual Global Hero Award, which recognizes a Washington-based change agent who has made significant contributions to global issues. In light of Seattle’s Next 50 celebration, Mayor McGinn shared his appreciation for being the mayor of a city that is full of people dedicated to connecting locally in efforts to leverage global social change. He recalled that, 50 years ago, Seattle sowed the early seeds of innovation and outward facing compassion when the city hosted the ambitious 1962 World’s Fair. We may not have fully understood the challenges we would face, but thanks to those early innovators, Seattle is “known for caring,” leadership in creativity, innovation, and deep compassion for everyone in the world. As a city and a community, McGinn said, Seattle reflects a group of people who connect their values both locally and globally.

This year, the Global Hero Award went to Therese Caouette, Executive Director for Partners Asia, in recognition of three decades’ work with organizers and advocates in Southeast Asia. Caouette’s work has emphasized community engagement as a means to building leadership and skills to bring resources to the local levels where they are most needed. Using participatory models in research and development projects has been the cornerstone of her work with refugees, migrants, and displaced persons across Southeast Asia and most recently, on the Myanmar border. In a brief acceptance speech, Caouette spoke movingly of the progress made by refugee and displaced persons communities on the borders of Myanmar. She is currently a faculty member at the University of Washington, Seattle University, and Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand.