Month: November 2012

Choosing to be active

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I have been in Dhaka this weekend, speaking at a conference about sustainable development in South Asia.  Sunday morning’s national papers in Bangladesh carried articles about the event, but also featured news about a tragic incident which took place in the city on Saturday evening.

Whilst conference delegates were stretching their legs between the day’s final session and the evening buffet dinner, a fire broke out in a garment factory in Ashulia, on the outskirts of Dhaka.  Reports currently offer figures of 120+ factory workers who perished in the blaze, and many people are still unaccounted for.

Another story about a factory fire in Asia.  This time it was Bangladesh, most recently it was one in a factory in Pakistan which made international news.

We are familiar with the “sweat-shop” issues raised so publically in the 1990’s, in terms of the disturbing conditions to which factory workers across Asia can be subject.  Many organisations since then, including CARE, have addressed the often hugely complex issues associated with the manufacture of items such as garments and electronics, and have successully run development programmes on factory floors, with factory owners, and in conjunction with the global buyers who sit at the top of the chain. Continue reading →

November journal: my new bike; and our entertaining children

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Recently, I have been over-run with plenty of work travels, and so it’s great to have been back in Saigon for the past couple of weeks.  I love working in this part of the city (in the western corner of District 3) for all the local quirkiness of what’s on offer, as well as the daily hilarity of what goes on in our office…

I went downstairs earlier this afternoon for coffee, only to be confronted by a large brown eel writhing around on the reception floor.  It would seem our lunch this week was trying to make a break for it, and had leapt out of the plastic jerry-can it was sharing with its mate by the front door!  Eel hot-pot to look forward to tomorrow then….

Saigon is quickly gearing up for Christmas, and we are excited about being here again during the glitziest time of the year, when it is customary for a high proportion of the public (mainly young chain-smoking men) to dress up – really badly – as Santa Claus, whilst everyone else spray paints their shops in festive colours (we had a white spray-painted Christmas tree last year, photo here, and are hoping to outdo this with something even more kitsch next month.) Continue reading →

And the result is…

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Big day today.

Millions of Australians will end it comatose, as the annual Melbourne Cup tradition of drinking-your-entire-body-weight-in-beer-before-lunch will ensure that particular country’s collective outputs for 24 hours will be, at best, sub-optimal.

As the table-top dancing down under comes to a close, the United States of America will awake to Election Day, with polls still saying the result is “too close to call” – hopefully this is a canny angle to ensure media sales rather than pointing to the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led by Mitt “The Binder” Romney.

In Saigon, very little attention is being given to either of these events by the locals today.  Many international media outlets have tried to express what the US Election outcome will mean to the rest of the world.  For the lady who sold me a coffee on the street outside our office just now, it is implausible to find a connection between her daily grind with that of the politics playing out on the other side of the world.

But this gap is shrinking.  It will continue to take further generational change for some of the positive aspects of global citizenship to really shift the status quo.  But it will happen.  And the role of the private sector in accelerating this is finally being recognised.  Business as usual is changing. Continue reading →