Ideas and Action from Peru & Latin America

I was pleased to speak last week at a conference hosted by Ideas Peru in Lima, Peru. The conference looked at how to move forward with international development projects in Latin America. Participants came from across Latin America as well as Spain and Italy and were represented by mayors, local elected officials, city government officials, heads of NGOs, educators, multilateral funding organizations, and passionate citizens.

Ideas Peru is a new organization that is looking to take pent-up energy of the citizens and move it to action. The presenters offered different models on how to engage local government and hometown communities and how to achieve more accountability of government.

The sister cities model fits into this dialogue quite well. They indicated that national governments haven’t always been the best leader or most efficient engine to make progress on community projects, such as water or infrastructure. But as I explored this more it was also clear that others felt local governments didn’t have the expertise to execute projects so money was wasted and progress languished. In both the panel discussion and my plenary speech, I was able to offer tangible examples of how various constituencies within a community work in a private-public partnership. I found the attendees welcomed the ideas and model (even if I based this solely on the # of business cards I got during the conference expressing an interest in starting a sister city program) but moreover, they were ready for action.

It’ll be interesting to see what shakes out from this event, but I sensed a serious intent of the attendees to roll up their sleeves and get moving.