The most popular video on our new YouTube channel tells the stories of Turkish Cypriot entrepreneurs. It follows the journey of five entrepreneurs trying to align their business to European standards and regulations. Our goal was to raise awareness of the role of standards and the acquis communautaire in the northern part of Cyprus, and to demonstrate that there is a commercial case for adopting them even when they are not compulsory.
Ahmet Cetin for example, still remembers the time when he and his family were manually packaging their products one by one. Now he has a fully automatic packaging machine.
“Thanks to this we have a good standing and reputation in the market, which gives us hope for our children and business future,” he says.
Not because it looks good – at least this is not the only reason. Our web site is also accessible for people with disabilities. So a blind person that meets a UNDP staff member, and receives a business card can find and access information about our work.
Language is important. George Orwell said that “sloppy language is a sure sign of insincerity or sloppy thought.” So what of the modern-day perils of poor language?
In recent years it has become apparent that the abstract and opaque language of the financial services sector has – in part – enabled the proliferation of complex (and when misunderstood, dangerous) derivatives and other financial instruments to undo financial stability and growth.
The fact that so few people understood some of these complex instruments (including many economists) has contributed to the term “the real economy” entering widespread public usage to describe the part of the economy which actually made things and provided services. (Check out the BBC’s jargon buster for key financial terms.)
So what of development agencies? Well, they are not immune from the perils of linguistic abstraction. This matters a great deal because development agencies of all sizes have – quite rightly – committed themselves to the highest levels of transparency and accountability.
Less than a year ago, we teamed up with two enthusiastic young partners from the Uzbek anti-monopoly agency and helped create a web site where consumers can register their complaints.
National partners are fully supportive, and are maintaining the site in two languages (Uzbek and Russian), with updates on new legislation and regulations, success stories on the handling of consumer complaints, and a space for questions and answers.
In 2011 there were 6,700 paper based complaints, and since the launch of the web site in March 2011, 251 cases have been received and reviewed through the online system. In the last quarter of 2011 more than 130 complaints were received online.
After taking the train to Lublin, tomorrow I’ll be visiting one of our social enterprises which is also a café/bookstore.
Join me as I tweet photos and updates throughout the day. You can follow via Twitter Tuesday 21 February. If you’re not already, follow: @UNDP_Europe_CIS or me: @justynakrol #CoopLublin.
You’ll get a behind the scenes glimpse into how the café/bookstore works as a social enterprise, and who makes up the soul of “Spoldzielnia” in Lublin. I’ll be talking with our partners about how to better promote their work, and involve the local community. It is all extremely exciting and I want to share it with you!
A recent conversation with Jakub Wygnanski from Shipyard, the Unit for Social Innovation and Research in Poland, prompted me to take a second look at the Kafka Brigade UK website, which I had not visited in a while. The Kafka Brigade describes itself as “the first aid for bureaucratic breakdown” and focuses on action research to reduce red tape for citizens and businesses.
It struck me that their key principles, as described on the site (and copied below), could well be adopted, with some variation, by the development sector to inform the transition towards what Owen Barder has recently called “post bureaucratic aid” in a brilliant post on the results agenda. (more…)
Tobacco Free Initiative, Tobacco Smoke Can Make You Impotent - Canada
Within 24 hours, I participated in an analytical discussion on scaling up local development initiatives, attended a presentation about why change is hard, and made some interesting connections.
Discussing the difficulty of change helped me understand what was missing from the development dilemma of scaling up. Change is hard because our emotional side needs to be excited and motivated to change. If we only appeal to people’s rational side we won’t convince them to change their behaviour.
Ten years ago, the noted psychologist Daniel Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for showing how irrationality and risky decision-making play into economics, including the stock market.
His new book will explore the tension between our separate systems of thinking – our slow and deliberative side and our intuitive side. If the economic world has acknowledged the role of psychological and, yes, even irrational behavior, why do development practitioners think our field can escape from this basic truth?
Since we’re in the business of human development, we need to admit that part of being human means that we are not always rational.
Abdulla, a trainer with UNDP in Uzbekistan, shared his on the job experience living with a disability
I just returned from an inspiring meeting in Poland with Mohammed Yunus whose perspective on social businesses are still fermenting into ideas for action. For now, this blog covers another light bulb which ignited in Poland: genuine inclusion of people with disabilities.
Polish laws are strongly in favour of enriching the workplaces of people with disabilities. So much so that the burden of proof is on businesses to demonstrate results. If they demonstrate a diverse workforce, they can get a tax break. But only if they take action. This incentive is impressive and I saw in person how striking the results can be.
Businesses may need a legal kick, but soon they realize that their customers respect these efforts, and an inclusive business, like Biedronka (Polish retail), draw customers who are happier spending money on companies that care.
Did you know that Montenegro is mentioned in Dante’s Inferno? It turns out that in a small northern town located on the river banks of the UNESCO protected river Tara, 13th Century King Uros II “earned” a place in the eighth circle of hell for manufacturing replicas of Venetian coins and passing them off as his own.
There are many more hidden gems (both natural and cultural) in the country’s northern region, which is also the most underdeveloped. And yet, while Montenegro gets some 1.5 million visitors a year (and this number is growing), only five to seven percent of them venture to the country’s north.
Community-based ecotourism is currently the hot topic in UNDP’s Local Government Support Project office in Uzbekistan. We see it as a key part of supporting and empowering regional and local development, particularly in the regions of Djizak and Namangan.
One of the most exciting activities of the joint project between the Cabinet of Ministers and UNDP is the opening of the ski resort in Zaamin for another season.
Through research and training and the first development of a branding and marketing strategy for a tourism zone in Uzbekistan, we want to boost development and tourism in the Djizak region.
RT @MarijaNovkovic: No single prescription for #dev. Best practice or best fit? Embrace experimentation and make small changes. Adapt to ... 19 hours ago
RT @gquaggiotto: Owen: Development policy needs stop looking the missing ingredient. Rather we need to harness & shape evolution #kapu19 hours ago
RT @gquaggiotto: "From best practice to best fit" --> we need a #globaldev sector promoting experimentation #kapu19 hours ago
