Play the Game of Life
Ryan Petersen's Blog

Labels: Africa, International Development

Or is it?

How Big is the World

Labels: inspiration

 

 

 

 

Labels: california, lake tahoe

 

 

 

 

Labels: photos

 

 

 

 

Labels: photos, windmill, wine country

If you have an hour or two to dedicate to learning today, you'll enjoy this video of Jared Diamond's talk at Columbia University about his most recent book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succceed.

Labels: Collapse, International Development, Jared Diamond, video

 

 

 

 

Labels: california, windmill, wine country

 

 

 

 

Labels: california, photos, placerville

From a seminar in the Creating Effective Organizations course at Columbia Business School.

Start by complimenting your audience and sharing something from your own experience. The audience demands authenticity and candor. Sometimes it can be very good to acknowledge that you don't know the answer to the problem you are facing.

Energize:

The one word that leaders should interject into their speeches as often as possible is "energy." The number one job of a leader is to energize her followers!

Humanize:
The CEO should be the "personifcation of hope." Bring human values to your presentation.

Crytalize:
What do you want to be clear when you've finished? Make sure that it is. Clarity is the father of all understanding.

Summarize:

Repetition is the father of all learning. Repeat the most important parts of your message.


Three Questions to Consider:

How do I want the audience to feel?
What do I want them to think?
What do I want them to do?


Remember, perfect is the enemy of good. Just be real, and you'll do great.

Labels: business, Columbia Business School, presentations

Labels: inspiration

I just received this rather alarming press release from CoCoDA.org, a non-profit organization that works with the former refugee community of Santa Marta, El Salvador. In 2003 I served as a translator and coordinator for a project that helped update the computer lab of Santa Marta.

For Immediate Release
Contact: Tim Crouse, Companion Community Development Alternatives (CoCoDA)
Tel: 317/920-8643
Email: cocodaindy@igc.org


April 29, 2007

The situation brings back dark memories from their country’s civil war, in the 1980s, when these farming families saw their homes and livelihood destroyed, and were forced to flee, under bombs and bullets, across the border to Honduras.

Since 3 a.m. Friday morning, April 27, residents of the rural community of Santa Marta, in the mountains of the northern state of Cabañas, El Salvador, have been camped out on the road that leads to their community. They are keeping watch to prevent police from enforcing a controversial eviction order that would displace more than 50 families from the homes and farmland where they have rebuilt their lives over the past twenty years, land they have owned for thirteen years. Or so they thought.

Last September, the District Court of Victoria, the municipal seat where Santa Marta is located, issued an order for Santa Marta families to vacate three properties they had purchased for $26,400 in 1994. They were given a deadline of October 26, 2006. Caught entirely by surprise, the Community scrambled to get legal counsel, who on October 23 secured a postponement of the eviction order.

Santa Marta’s attorneys then presented an appeal to the Salvadoran Supreme Court for protection of the constitutional rights of the 50 families that would be affected by the eviction order and of the community itself, which had purchased the land. Stating lack of sufficient evidence, the Supreme Court dismissed the case, which led to the present eviction order to take effect this past Friday. Santa Marta’s case was re-submitted to the Supreme Court, with more supporting evidence, also on Friday, at 4 p.m., just before the courts closed. Now the courts are closed for the weekend and for the May 1 Workers’ Day holiday.

Fearful that anything may happen over the long holiday weekend, the community plans to hold vigil until courts re-open on Wednesday and, they hope, there will be a court action to cancel the eviction order until the ownership dispute can be resolved through due process. Given the strange and suspicious turns in this case, however, Santa Marta is dubious about how much faith they can have in the justice system itself.

On August 1, 1994, the Cooperativa Nueva Heróica Santa Marta, the legal entity representing the community, purchased three properties for $26,400. Mr. Sigfredo Pleytez, the agent representing the two owners of the lots, arranged the sale, provided all the standard legal documents for the transaction, and signed title of ownership over to Santa Marta.

The Cooperative paid all corresponding taxes, filed their title with the national registry of property and mortgages of El Salvador, and the community proceeded to invest in their homes and community infrastructure with the security of being the legitimate owners of the land. They had no reason to suspect otherwise, and treasured their land beyond measure for having been refugees in exile during El Salvador’s civil war and for having put aside other basic human needs in order to purchase the land at market value.

But in 1998, the former owners, Ms. Maria Elba Beltran Bonilla and Mr. Juan José Bonilla, filed a lawsuit against Pleytez and the Santa Marta Cooperative, claiming that Pleytez had used a fraudulent title. Pleytez assured the Cooperative that it was all just a misunderstanding and that he would handle the problem. He didn’t.

The first circuit court of Sensuntepeque ruled against Pleytez, nullifying the title used in the sale to Santa Marta, and thereby nullifying the legality of Santa Marta’s title to the land. Ironically, the very same court had authorized Pleytez’ title eleven years earlier, in 1987. Evidence indicates that Pleytez and Beltrán had a business and personal relationship at that time, and that Beltrán received some payment from Pleytez for the 1994 sale of the land to the Cooperative.

When they were issued the eviction notice last September, Santa Marta’s 451 families had already begun planning their big celebration for October 10, 2007, the twentieth anniversary of their return home from refugee camps in Honduras. There was much to celebrate.

The third class of the first post-war generation was about to graduate from Santa Marta’s own high school, thirty-six of whom are now attending university in the city. Most families now have cinderblock homes with running water, electricity, fruit trees, and cell phones to communicate with family working abroad. No one is turned away from the Santa Marta Health Center, which is mostly staffed by Santa Marta’s own health promoters and includes a physical rehabilitation and manual therapy facility. Santa Marta has one of the best equipped computer facilities in rural El Salvador, connected by satellite to the world wide web. The local radio station, Radio Victoria, is run by Santa Marta youth and has become the primary source of local news and radio entertainment in the region, also with loyal listeners across the border in Honduras. They just inaugurated a science lab funded in large part by the Santa Marta immigrant community in Herndon, Virginia.

Despite free trade policies that have been disastrous for Cabañas farmers, it seems that Santa Marta is beginning to see evidence of the better future they envisioned back in the early days of resettlement during the war. To now be threatened once again with losing their land seems a sinister reminder that democratic reforms in El Salvador since the war may be no guarantee that the basic rights of citizens will be respected where economic interests are concerned.

Some speculate that plans for building a major highway through Cabañas as part of the “Plan Puebla Panama” development corridor is creating speculation jacking up the value of real estate that 10 years ago was considered the least desirable land in the country. The former owners in the dispute for Santa Marta’s land say they will drop the case if the community purchases the land for $100,000. Santa Marta representatives say they already bought the land, they have no intention of paying for it a second time, or of being forced out of their homes. How justice will be served in the Salvadoran courts remains to be seen.

(For live updates or to arrange media interviews on the ground in Santa Marta, contact Radio Victoria at (011) 503-2389-3381)

Labels: el salvador, International Development