4th Annual Northland Bioneers Conference on October 24-25!

Since the planning committee has made special efforts to make the conference very affordable this year in order to ensure young people and young leaders can be present, I wanted to make sure to publicize this upcoming conference. In registering, conference attendees are also making a commitment to help keep the event zero-waste.

The 4th Annual Northland Bioneers Conference will be held on Oct. 24-25, 2009, at Willey Hall, University of MN. Bioneers Conferences inspire a shift to live on Earth in ways that honor the web of life, each other and future generations.

This year's event will include keynote speakers Dr. Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of MN, and Susan Hubbard, Co-founder and Co-president of Eureka Recycling, as well as local workshops and national plenaries. The conference will feature a youth issues panel and several of the plenary presentations (DVDs of lectures given one week prior in California) are by youth leaders of the environmental and social justice movements in the United States. Don't miss your chance to be part of this amazing conference!

Don't make plans, make options.

"Don't make plans, make options." I saw this quote in a magazine during my layover in Frankfurt before the last leg of our trip into Abuja. I didn't realize at the time that the very nature of international development work and our exchange trip, in particular, would be so wisely foreshadowed by that admonition.

If you've been following my tweets or Facebook status updates, you know I've been back in the States for a few days already. We flew into New York City on 9/11 after a few changes related to our program itinerary in Nigeria. It has been a bit like the amazing race.

• We learned upon arrival in Nigeria that the public universities had been on strike for the past 3 months. The guest house at the University of Benin had then written to our program coordinator explaining that our group's safety could not be guaranteed due to the security concerns. It was agreed by the State Department and US Embassy that we should not proceed with our original plan to stay 3 weeks in Benin City.

• We extended our stay in Abuja, visiting with additional businesses and civil society organizations. We were also able to travel further north in Nigeria, to Kaduna state, to visit Jos Wildlife Park and the national history museum.

• We were able to visit Lagos, which was not part of our original program, and realized how much more developed and wealthy the former capital city is compared to Abuja. Typical signs of modernization, including paved roads, shopping malls, and a healthy night life, abounded. This was, of course, in sharp contrast to houses on stilts in the Lagos Island Lagoon, people urinating freely on the streets, and extreme impoverishment. It felt at times, however, not so different from Manhattan.

Speaking of, we spent our first day back in the U.S. in New York City and then drove that night down the coast to Washington, DC for a weekend of rest to recover from jet lag. From there, we headed to Baton Rouge, LA where we have joined on with a Ugandan delegation focused on entrereneurship and business at Southern University for 2 weeks. The final component of our program will then kick off at Wilberforce University in Ohio.

One peculiar thing I remember about making payments in Nigeria was that they were quite comfortable operating on trust. If they didn't have a 50 naira bill for me when I paid for my Internet service, they'd tell me to use my half hour of time online and that they'd have my change ready for me before I left. And they always did. No doubt that philosophy permeated throughout our trip. At one point after we had veered off the original schedule, our group stopped making plans and focused daily on navigating the available options. And the Nigerians did not fail to give us the meaningful hospitality and experience we requested before we left the country.

Is there a vaccination for Dutch Disease?

I'm taking malaria pills weekly and I was vaccinated against typhoid and yellow fever before traveling to Nigeria. Studying Nigeria's development during our exchange program, I've learned of a new disease for which it doesn't appear a shot can be prescribed.

The Open Society Initiative of West Africa (OSIWA), one of George Soros' open society programs, published "Natural Resource Management Capacity in West Africa," in 2008. They define Dutch Disease as referring "to the phenomen, first observed in the Netherlands, where, partly because of the discovery of oil or minerals, a country's economy is de-industrialized to the extent that its local production capacity including agriculture and manufacturing becomes non-competitive. Imports increase, exports fall and there is a general shift of resources away from tradable towards non-tradables like construction. Farmers suffer most as cheap agricultural imports make their produce less competitive." Indeed, Nigeria is poorer today than it was before oil production began.  The report mentions that three types of effects occur with Dutch Disease:

1. Resource Movement, whereby the natural resource sector drains away talents, capital, public spending, etc. from other sectors of the economy
2. Spending, as (a) revenue windfalls create demands that cause inflation in other sectors and (b) tradables have fixed international prices, the country becomes non-competitive in those sectors globally
3. Exchange Rate, refers to increasing flows of foreign exchange, especially in boom times, and if the foreign exchange is sterilized, it can cause an appreciation of the local currency, damaging exports. 

The Nigerians we met with shared a few symptoms of Dutch Disease from their own perspectives:

• Nigeria imports petroleum since despite its oil wealth (the 5th largest producer worldwide, with proven reserves of approximately 30 billion barrels), it lacks the manufacturing capacity to refine its own crude oil. 

• Nigeria imports food since, despite being the world's largest producer of cassava and ample arable land, the protectionist West dumps its subsidized agricultural commodities with ease due to free-trade agreements like the African Growth and Opportunity Agreement (AGOA). 

• Nigeria aims to repair its image as being infamously corrupt. Over $400 billion has been siphoned off from the national coffers by politicians and the military. Despite introduction of the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) and Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), lawlessness appears to be the rule. Dayo Olaide, of OSIWA, insisted in our meeting that the rhetoric around corruption needed to change. "Stop fighting corruption and start fighting impunity." 

It is a paradox of plenty that the largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa (earning over $340b in the past 40 years) still leaves 70% of its citizens living on less than a dollar per day.

Minnesota is also blessed with countless natural and human resources, ranging from the mighty Mississippi to the miles of farmland to our Fortune 500 companies. In many ways, the generations that have preceded our own set up innovative mechanisms to build our thriving community. Are we taking our prophylaxis or getting our shots these days to make sure all the good we've got is immune from being lost? Can we imagine and implement strategies for a strong and sustainable Minnesota in the decades to come?

Seeking exceptional young women for Leaders of Today and Tomorrow Fellows Program!

I'm a proud alumna of the Leaders of Today and Tomorrow's "Women Making a Difference in Public Policy Conference," and am thrilled to be part of scaling up the program to include a mentoring component and an expanded conference in 2010. LOTT is an amazing resource for young and emerging women leaders in Minnesota and I hope you'll consider applying or passing the word on to an exceptional young woman you know. Thanks for your support!

League of Women Voters Education Fund (LWVMNEF) is seeking dynamic young women to become fellows for the Leaders of Today and Tomorrow (LOTT) Fellows Program. The LOTT Fellows Program is an expansion of the very successful LOTT Women’s Leadership Conference, designed to inspire young women to become active citizens and envision themselves as future leaders.

Young women in their final year of college who take initiative at their school and in their community are encouraged to apply. Candidates for the LOTT Fellows Program will have demonstrated academic achievement and leadership behaviors, enjoy collaborating with others to accomplish goals and have a commitment to community and civic involvement.

The program will involve activities from January through May 2010 including four monthly workshops on January 30, February 20, March 13, and April 24, at least one additional informal one-on-one mentoring session, and the annual LOTT Women’s Leadership Conference (April 9-10, 2010). Additionally, LOTT Fellows, supported by Mentors, will plan and lead a civic engagement project for attendees of the LOTT Women’s Leadership Conference.

Women interested in applying for the LOTT Fellows Program should go to the League of Women Voters Minnesota website for more information and application materials. Applications are due by October 15, 2009.

The LOTT program is made possible by generous support from the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota. For additional information on the LOTT Fellows Program please contact LWV Program Director, Allie Moen, at 651-224-5445 or at amoen@lwvmn.org.

Citizens League Action Group: Poverty

For the second installment about the Citizens League Action Groups, I'm excited to feature guest blogger, Meredith Salmi. Meredith and I first met while organizing non-partisan legislative candidate forums in Dakota County during the 2008 elections. Meredith is a 25-year-old Minneapolitan who works in public policy at Arc Greater Twin Cities. She is also co-chair of the Citizens League’s Poverty Action Group and shares her insights into poverty and her experience of civic engagement below. 

This past January a group of twenty or so of us young(er) adults looked across the table at each other with one single passion:  Poverty. We didn’t necessarily agree on what causes people get in or out of poverty or even the definition of poverty, but what we agreed upon is that we wanted to make an impact, however small, on the lives of Minnesotans in poverty. In the coming months, our meetings dwindled in attendees and grew in the number of reasons people live in poverty, but the theme of food access seemed to be a constant interest of the group’s.
 
We came up with a purpose statement to guide our work:  The Poverty Action Group is working towards reducing food disparities as a medium to empowerment in lower-income communities. With our purpose statement in mind, we set up many one-to-one meetings with leaders in food access in the Twin Cities to get an idea of how our group could make an impact. Turns out, trying to make a difference is a tough nut to crack.
 
One thing that I (and many other people) have noticed about our generation is that we like instant gratification. We text fast, we like our food fast, and gosh darnit, systems changes better be fast too. Our group had a commitment to work through this fall which, as we looked at creating a project on our own, seemed unreasonable. These things take years…people dedicate their lives to systems change. So we decided to latch on to something someone was already doing—give them the people power that they might be lacking.
 
So after another round of community interviews, we got connected with NorthPoint in North Minneapolis, a health and human services center. NorthPoint is one organization of many who are part of a grant to examine and make a difference in the health disparities on the Northside. NorthPoint’s role is to ask Northside residents how they get their fruits and vegetable and what produce they’d like to see accessible on the Northside. Our group has surveyed Northside residents at various community events about their healthy food access and will have the chance to assist in holding focus groups with Northside youth.
 
Although our project is short-lived and might not create the systems change that we had dreamed about back in January, my involvement has given me many benefits. Probably the most important is that I feel more connected to my community. I was able to take time with my neighbors on the Northside just by surveying them on their daily lives. I also feel engaged in the food policy occurring in my city and my state, something that does not intersect with my typical policy interests. For example, I’ve become educated on Homegrown Minneapolis and have been examining our zoning policies around farmers’ markets and home gardens. Our group will be done this fall with our project with NorthPoint, but we’ve already been braintstorming some ideas of how to stay connected—and maybe debunk the idea that young adults only stick around for the short-term.