Episode 3: Youth Participation in Development
In our third episode we speak with Pelumi Fadare who is a 24 year old polyglot. Her various professional experiences include working at the Spanish Embassy in Belgium, a consultancy with CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, where she supported the resourcing of young changemakers from the global south by designing and launching a pilot program called the Youth Action Lab and a current consultancy with Plan International. She is the co-founder of the social enterprise ApplicAid, an online mentorship platform that helps students apply for grants, financial aid and other subsidized educational opportunities. She also has a YouTube channel, Ninjanspiration, devoted to providing information to youth about educational funded opportunities, such as international conferences and study abroad programs. She joins us from Brussels, Belgium.
She speaks to us about:
her experiences as a youth changemaker
being a global citizen
co-design and participatory processes
founding a startup
improving access to and awareness of funded education opportunities for youth
being a ‘doer’
her thoughts on leadership
the importance of a multi-stakeholder approach - and much more.
Editors Note: The transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Transcript
Intro: Typically these organizations work on youth issues, but then there are no youth involved in these processes. So what I feel like what my team and I are trying to do and really believe in is that if you’re going to be talking about me, you can’t do it without me, right? So we’re trying to put ourselves out there as experts, even though we’re still in our formative years, we also have some valid experiences and valid ideas, and they should be taken into consideration. So we believe that it’s all about being able to put ourselves out there, if I can say sell our expertise, and having these organization believe that we can actually deliver and we actually do — so its fantastic.
Safa: Welcome back to the Rethinking Development podcast. My name is Safa and I will be your host as we speak with and learn from practitioners of all backgrounds and affiliations around the world. With each conversation, we aim to rethink ethical behavior and best practices through the lived experiences and personal reflections of different practitioners. Our guest today is Pelumi Fadare. Pelumi is a polyglot who speaks nine languages. She was born in Nigeria and raised in Spain. She has a bachelor’s degree in translation and interpreting and a master’s degree in business management. Currently she is working as a young professional at the Spanish Embassy in Belgium. She has a vested interest in international affairs, focusing on trade and international development and cooperation. She has also worked to support the international NGO CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation by providing advice on grassroots youth partnership and resourcing young changemakers from the global south by designing and launching a pilot program called the Youth Action Lab. She’s the cofounder of the social enterprise Applicaid, which is a startup that promotes global education justice by offering an online tutorial system to help students apply for grants, aid and other subsidized educational opportunities. She’s also a YouTuber and has a YouTube channel called Ninjainspiration, devoted to providing information to youth about educational funded opportunities such as international conferences and grants and study abroad programs. In 2018 she was a Youth Representative at the European Youth Hearings and in 2014 was a Youth Delegate at the Many Languages One World Youth Forum for the United Nations Academic Impact. She’s an active member of different organizations, including Global Changes at Global Solutions Initiative, Ashoka, Future Leaders, AISEC, Erasmus + learning mobility for youth workers, Italian Diplomatic Academy, Waves of Democracy, Model UN Communities and more. Pelumi, thank you so much for speaking with us today.
Pelumi: Wow, thank you so much, I was like, who are you talking about?
Safa: It’s you!
Pelumi: It’s really interesting because I’m used to writing that when I have to work on different things, but nobody has ever read it to me.
Safa: Well, just to give some context to the listeners about your age, you’re 24 correct?
Pelumi: Yes, I am.
Safa: Fantastic, just so that they can put in context all the wonderful accomplishments. So, just to begin with, can you maybe tell us a bit about your childhood or what experiences you had going up that kind of made you interested to work in the field of education, international development and cooperation?
Pelumi: Thank you so much. I’m so glad to be invited to come on your podcast and basically as you said I was born in Nigeria, but I grew up in Spain and the only thing I can remember since I was young was my curiosity and my desire to interact with people from different backgrounds, understanding that also Nigeria is a very multi cultural and multilingual country. We have about 250 different languages and dialects, so it’s a very diverse country and I think just having people and neighbours from different ethnic groups just made me so curious about interacting with different people from different backgrounds. And of course, we moved to Spain, which also is in itself a very diverse country. So Spanish is not the only official language. We also have Catalan, Galician, Basque language. So it’s a very diverse country to which also give me more interest in learning more languages, which eventually led me to taking my degree in translation and interpreting and intercultural studies. So from that age I’ve always been interested in how society works and a bit of politics, but when I was young, I didn’t really know it was politics, I just wanted to know more about society.
Safa: As we mentioned, you are a polyglot. You have learned nine languages and that process, could you tell us about how one language has led to another and what are the opportunities that have opened up for you, just based on the fact that you are so multilingual?
Pelumi: So for me, I always have to refer back to a specific moment in my life. Of course, my background in these two countries helped me become the person who was interested in learning more languages. So I was the type of child who would go to extracurricular classes and learn more languages, I started with French. and I had a neighbour who was actually French, and I would go to her house literally every evening just to get the chance to speak French. I didn’t know that all these languages would later be useful for me, for a specific purpose and the work that I’m doing, but I was just interested in understanding different cultures. And then I studied German at the university, I was able to do my study abroad in Germany and Austria. I decided to also do Arabic and at the grant or scholarship to go to Morocco and study Arabic there. Then I was like, okay, next let’s do Chinese. But also the more I started learning different languages, I started to realize that okay, it’s not only about the communication with people but also understanding societies, and in the case of Arabic for example, understanding peace and conflict. So all this learning process led me to understand more and have a developed passion in the world of development, right? So regarding what really triggered me to start working in this field, when I was 18 in 2014 when there was a call for, let’s say, global citizens. And that was the first time I came across this word and I actually went to Wikipedia, I was like okay what does this mean? And I immediately identified with that. Okay, I am a global citizen, I’m someone who feels like I have a duty with the world, I love to learn about the world, but also I as a citizen, I have to contribute to the development of this world. So the call was specifically by the United Nations Academic Impact alongside ELS and they made a call for young people to write on global citizenship and multilingualism, so for me it was rather, you know, the moment I’ve been waiting for. And when I saw the opportunity I would get from this, which was to go to New York for the first time and give a speech at the UN about this topic and of course about education, which is one of my other passions too and how we can open opportunities for young people who don’t have access to opportunities for studies or just financial aid in general. So, yeah, I did it without knowing what would happen and eventually I did get selected alongside 59 other amazing laureates. And I would say that this was the moment for me when I went to New York and I was able to just gain new perspectives, discussing with like minded young people, thinkers I would say, and doers, with whom I was able to draft some proposals on how to help member states to strengthen their international corporation specifically on issues of education and accessibility. So that moment just changed my whole perspective. — I was this girl living in Spain, you know, just studying intercultural studies and translation. But also, I was like okay, all my language skills can evolve into something bigger. And yeah, from then I’ve just, you know, tried and I was eager to find ways I could contribute more to society.
Safa: You mentioned being there and being in a group of other like minded young people and providing support to member states. You’ve been a Youth Delegate for a variety of meetings and gatherings. What have been your experiences when it comes to people really listening to the ideas and the thoughts and feelings of young people? In some cases, the participation of youth in meetings is kind of more at a tokenistic level where they just want youth to be there, just to be able to say that we were including the voices of youth. But in your experiences how has it been, have you and the people that you were with, the other young people been taken seriously in terms of providing content and providing suggestions?
Pelumi: Yeah, that’s a good question. And I do understand that many times it might feel like we’re just there to take the photo with them and be like, yeah, the young people were included, but I’m actually one of the people that believes that — a least in the European context, which I think it’s a bit different to maybe some African countries — and those event that I have participated in, for example every two years the EU, the Parliament actually organizes an event called the European Youth Event and this event takes place in Strasbourg in France, and it gathers about 8,000 young people, so it’s quite a massive one, and the idea is to actually give young people the space to discuss about their future. We gather together during three days, and we’re able to discuss about things that we feel, that we are concerned about, about the future, our present, and also how we can together as young people create new ideas and talk to the EU, the Parliament in this case, and tell them okay, these are the struggles we face and these are our proposals for you to actually take them into consideration. So it is true that on a certain level it might feel like okay, they’re just bringing young people so it can look good, but I do think that there is a genuine interest for,, in this case the Parliament or even the Commission to really involve young people. The Commission for example has its own program yearly with the European Development Days that takes place in Belgium in Brussels every year, where all development practitioners come together and there is a big focus on young people. So what they do is also they make a call for young leaders out there who are working on different topics to come and share their ideas and expertise. So I do think there is a tendency to want to involve young people and to actually listen to them. So the problem, of course, or the issue is how do you go from just saying and stating the problem and how you would like to find solutions to actually the implementation. So what I think that they’re trying to do these days is through different let’s say, co designing process, which I find really important, I’m gonna make an example, for example, with CIVICUS, this international NGO, what I was able to do with a team of young people under 30 was to create a fellowship program for young youth activists in the global south. So what we do is that we were part of the whole process, as young people we were able to decide these are the elements we want to include in this, this is how we want it to be, because we understand the needs and the problems these young people are facing and we are able to advocate on their behalf. So I do think that things are changing and it’s not only about just showcasing, but actually involving young people in the process of this change creation.
Safa: I see. So one of the areas of work that you mentioned that you focus on is, of course, youth engagement and youth participation, but the other you mentioned is opening educational opportunities for youth and access to financial aid and support for youth. You have your own YouTube channel, Ninjainspiration, where you speak about these issues and you try to create a community where you share information about opportunities for grants and aid related to education opportunities. Can you tell us about your experience with starting that channel and the reflections you have on the power of a platform like YouTube to have an impact in terms of raising awareness or sharing resources?
Pelumi: I think YouTube is a fantastic platform for that. Of course we already have a lot of websites and I’m gonna just start saying that there’s a lot of information out there, but the problem is how people actually get access to this information or even if they’re aware that this information exists. So I do believe that many of the times that I go to conferences and that is something I think about more and more, when I go to all these conference, all these youth gatherings, all these international forums, when I look around, I see that most of the people that I see are like me. I would call myself very privileged to be fair, because I have had the opportunity or specific opportunities which has lead me to other opportunities. So when I see people in these events, they are typically like me, they already have the information, they’re exposed. But there is a large group of people in different continents, not only Africa, Asia, the Middle East, who are constantly eager to just find a bit of guidance and a bit of direction towards how to get this opportunity or even how to apply, or what to do or what makes a good motivation letter or what makes a good application so they can stand out and eventually be selected for all these opportunities also. So for me, when I created my YouTube channel in 2015, it started as just me being excited about all the opportunities that exist in the world. And I used to tell myself there is no way I can enjoy this on my own. Even if I turned 200 years old, I could never use all the scholarships that exist in the world. So I thought okay why not share all these opportunities and information. So YouTube — I love talking, so for me, YouTube was like the easiest route to go, instead of writing, yeah, I could have made a blog, but for me writing is not my thing — I love to write when I when I have to, but I just prefer to speak because I feel like you transmit emotion, you can put a face to the person that is writing, so for me, verbal communication comes out stronger to be fair. And I realized something, actually, over the years that I would make the video, and I would say oh nobody cares about this, but people would actually make a comment like, oh thank you so much for making the video, how can I apply? Can you help me in the process, can you assist me? People are even willing to pay for you to help them to write these things because they’re so desperate to change their circumstances. Because people believe in the power of education and that if you get the right opportunity, your life can change. And I am a testimony to this because having that opportunity to go to New York opened my mind so much to interact with other people that I would have never had the chance to interact with. So for me, it’s kind of like creating a stream, a line of information that people can get access to and be like, yes, I can do this. And also I think it’s about motivation. It’s not about being a motivation speaker, but just, you know, someone who they can hear from and be like, okay, scholarships exist, they’re hard to get, but it’s not impossible. And if you try you will get it. The only time you fail yourself is when you actually never try. So for me too, even now I try to, I want to do more, because I haven’t been doing that much, I have applied to stuff too and didn’t get them or was rejected many times. But I know that the persistence is what will eventually make me successful. So just hearing this from someone your age, I think, just makes a difference, you know, and people are willing to invest in their future. But they just need the guidance and the correct information and maybe like a centralized place for this information, because in my case, it’s my hobby, so I just love to look for information online about scholarships, I know so many websites. For me — some people like playing games or football, but for me, looking for a scholarship is one of my best hobbies. So if I’m able to gather this information and share it on one platform, people just get access to it, and I find it very useful for them.
Safa: It is such a valuable service and as you say you kind of bring together and streamline the information on one platform in a way where people who might view it can also relate to the person who is sharing it as another young person, as a peer , as someone their age. But I have to ask, could you tell us also the story behind the name of the channel?
Pelumi: On my channel, I wrote let’s say a motto for me, life is full of opportunities, you need to catch them as fast as possible. So for me, when I was looking for a name of a channel, I wanted to be something catchy and something funny. And I don’t know why, I find ninjas very interesting. They are fast, they are agile and they captivate your attention. So I was looking for names and I saw the word ninja and then I thought, ok, I want to inspire young people, I want to inspire young people as fast as a ninja. So — Ninjainspiration.
Safa: Very interesting. The work that you were doing on the YouTube channel it has also morphed into something else with the social enterprise ApplicAid. Could you also tell us a bit about the motivation behind starting that and what the work is that you’re trying to accomplish through that platform.
Pelumi: Definitely. It’s very, very linked. In 2018 I went to a MUN Conference, Model United Nations, which is basically like a simulation of the UN meetings, gatherings, but in the form of a conference for high school students and university students. So I did one in London, Lyman, which is a very famous one, and I met the person, who is now my co founder for ApplicAid, Backtosch, who is German. We met at this conference and we spoke very vaguely, not a lot, because it was really busy studying during that time. But eventually we reconnected on Facebook and we saw that we were both interested in scholarships and I just approached him on Facebook with the message and then we had a call and he was like, look, I have this idea about a way to use mentoring, scholarship mentoring for young people in a way where we can have mentors, people who already have had access to scholarships and have this knowledge and connect them or match them as Tinder does with mentees, people who are interested in scholarships but don’t know how to go about it or feel a bit lost. So basically, I was like, yeah, cool idea, let’s do this. And we eventually had different calls and we ended up coming together, making the business plan or the social enterprise plan, we applied for seed funding, we got it. We have support from Think Big, from Telefonica Foundation and others. So we just wanted to really help young people out there, and we thought that okay, the YouTube channel is good because it shares the information. But then we need a way to actually match people together and work with them on their applications, which is where they find most of the difficulties in terms of applying. So we did. We did some matches to try, test the prototype. It worked out well, and since then, we’ve had a lot of people interested and we have matched more than 100 mentors and mentees together. And right now our team is also expanding. So we started of course Backtosch and I but then we expanded to three people, four people who have been amazing, and now it’s going well and it’s really helpful because people really want this type of service.
Safa: Fantastic. So you see the future of this as just growing and expanding the reach?
Pelumi: Yeah, definitely. So we would love to help more people. But of course, in being able to help more people we also need to have more mentors because the mentors are the key part of the program itself. So we know that there is a need for people who are the mentees but the mentors are the ones that actually volunteer their time and are willing to commit to a person and help them. We have a guideline we use which we created — basically in 30 days, one month, you have a scheduled call with your mentee every week. In that call, we have a guideline on what topics to talk about in terms of helping that person to make their motivation letter better or their CV better just, you know, making them shine for their applications. So once this application gets to the committee, the selection committee, the person can have a better chance or at least 60% chance of winning. So we do foresee growing and helping more people. And right now, our database of scholarships is mostly focused on European scholarships and, of course, other elite scholarships, but we would love to also expand to other African programs, Asian programs, create more diversity, so many different things are on our minds actually.
Safa: Earlier we talked about your experiences with being a Youth Delegate, but have you experienced that your identity - perhaps as a woman or being Spanish and being Nigerian, other aspects of your identity — have you found that they have opened up opportunities for you or have they sometimes been seen as barriers in terms of other people and the way they react or interact with you? What have been your experiences with navigating this industry or this field or the work that you do and your multiple identities, so to speak?
Pelumi: I think my diverse identity or background has been a blessing. I have to say I’m very grateful for that, and I do think I have a long way to go. So I think that I will encounter more challenges and I look forward to that actually because that’s how we grow as humans. But for now, to be fair, it’s been mostly on the positive side and me being able to have this understanding of how my country, my home country Nigeria works and also how my other home country Spain works. And just how that helps me as a person to have this multi background with Africa and Europe, and the dynamics of both continents also. Generally it has been very positive and people do appreciate this diverse background that I have. So it’s mostly worked on the positive side for me. Of course, more on a personal level, sometimes people want you to choose, like what are you, who are you and where are you from? And they ask do you feel more Spanish or do you feel more Nigerian.? But then my answer to them is always well, I feel both. There is no way I’m gonna deny my whole childhood in Nigeria until I was ten, that’s an important part of my life and then I can’t also deny my teenage-hood and my formative years in which I’ve actually grown to know who I am and the person I want to be and deny Spain, because they both have built me to become the person I am today. And of course, family plays a big role in that also. So for me, it’s been mostly a blessing, and I’m very, very grateful for that.
Safa: Earlier we spoke about your work with the NGO CIVICUS. What have been your experiences with working with a donor in terms of relating it back to the conditions or the framework or the structure given by the funder?
Pelumi: Yeah, today was an emotional day because it’s sort of our last day on this project. It has been an eight month journey with CIVICUS and unfortunately, given the global health crisis with coronavirus, we were unable to have an in person meeting in April with all the activists (which I’m gonna explain now) that were selected in this program. But of course that has had to be canceled because of the current situation. So today we had our call, you know, saying our farewells to each member of the team. But I’ll go to the whole story. So basically it was an open call, they were looking for a team of young people that could work with them, with CIVICUS, on a project that they were piloting for the first time. And NORAD, as a funder, gave them all the let’s say freedom’s to experiment and to find new ways of funding and supporting young grassroots activists in the global south. So that’s our main target group. So what I mean by this are activists that don’t work with or are not affiliated with traditional NGOs or organizations, and they are working on more individual activities, but they’re definitely connected with different social movements and human rights work. We applied as a team, and we got the opportunity, and we were able to work for eight months with CIVICUS. So there are three pillars to the program. Firstly is to give them financial resources because most activists always encounter financial problems, because they also have to put from there individual monies into what they are doing. So that support is important. And then we wanted them to be connected in terms of their activism and how they could understand what they are each going through and how they could relate to each other. And number three is on the policy level. So them being able not only to be activists and protest on the streets, but how do you take your activism towards more the policy side and how you can engage with policy makers and really advocate for what you really want. The word for this is just a co-design process, which is what CVICUS uses. A co-creation process. A co-design process where we are experimenting with ways of how together we can create a program that can last and can create sustainable change. NORAD, the funding agency, has been very, very open to this type of system. But of course, NORAD has been dealing more with CIVICUS, not with us as the team . But from what I’ve seen and the way CVICUS has responded to us and the way they’ve been so flexible and so ready to hear our point of views and work with our ideas has been really, really amazing. One of the best experiences I have had and I’m so glad I was part of this experience and I look forward to also definitely finally meeting the young activists.
Safa: What would you say is one of the main things that that experience taught you, whether it’s about the co-design process or about the content in terms of supporting young activists?
Pelumi: A big takeaway from this co-design process is that if we are looking for solutions to problems, we can’t always go through the same system of solving the problems, which I have seen with this project in the sense that this co-design allows us to just experiment in ways that otherwise we would not be able to do. Bringing people of diverse backgrounds, we were nine people in my team coming from every corner of the global south, from Latin America, Caribbean, to the Pacific, to Africa, the Middle East. So it was very interesting to just see how we all work as individuals and also in teams bringing our different experiences together to create a common vision and a common goal. So for me, that has been really good, and working with my team members has been a blast. So currently with members of this team from CIVICUS, we’re working on a research project for Plan International that focuses on shrinking space for civil society and its implications for young activists in non-enabling environments. So it’s also a very good opportunity to kind of investigate how these young people have to deal with difficulties in this environment and we have our case study countries, for example, Bolivia, Cambodia Malawi, East Timore and Togo so also very diverse across the global south. And it is also a great opportunity because, of course, Plan International is also giving their trust to a team of young consultants and allowing us to be part of a process that normally we would not be because typically, these organization work on youth issues, but then there are no youth involved in these processes. So what I feel like my team and I are trying to do and really believe in is that if you’re going to be talking about me, you can’t do it without me, right? So we’re trying to put ourselves out there as experts actually, even though we are all still in our formative years, we also have some valid experiences and valid ideas, and they should be taken into consideration. So we believe that it’s all about being able to put ourselves out there, if I can say sell our expertise, and having these organizations believe that we can actually deliver and we actually do. So it’s fantastic.
Safa: I totally support that. So I also want to speak to you about the work that you’re doing right now as a young professional with the Cultural and Scientific Department of the Spanish Embassy in Belgium. Tell us a bit about that work. How is that position or the work you do there different or related to the other work that you’ve done in the past?
Pelumi: Yeah, As you know, I work in the Culture Department, and I love it because it’s a program that was developed by the Spanish Development Agency called AECID and what they do is that every year they send a number of young people to work in different Spanish embassies around the world. And what I love most about the embassy work is that it’s not only about public diplomacy, of course, as you know, an embassy is there to create a good image and a positive image for their country. But the good thing about the fact that I’m working through the Spanish Development Agency is that there is a core of development and international corporation to the work we do. So what we try to do is with culture and the arts, promote human rights and topics of inclusion and equality and all the SDG’s and I love that. With the arts and culture, it’s easier to also navigate through this type of topics that normally would be a bit hard. I definitely see a connection in that sense with my passion for development and my work at the embassy. I’ve always been interested in diplomacy, but I do think there is a connection between diplomacy and international development that most of the time we don’t really think about or we don’t really highlight that much. Me being able to do my nine to five job at the embassy and then in my free time being able to work in development programs or projects, I really find that fascinating.
Safa: You’ve experienced work in different areas- in NGOs, in a diplomatic mission , using social media, social enterprises. What would you say going forward is the kind of method or the approach that you feel works best for you or you think really has the potential to have greater impact in the future?
Pelumi: Mmm, that’s a good question. I feel like right now the future is uncertain given the current situation, but I do think that even the current situation allows us to try to innovate and think of ways that we can really solve global issues and create a better world for all of us. All my different experiences, to be fair, have been basically out of me being someone who’s very active, I feel like I just have to do something. So it’s more out of my desire to just contribute and then in that process I’ve been able to learn a lot. So regarding how this could contribute to the future or what I think would help, I think that there is a need for a multi-stakeholder approach to any type of problem. Actually, you know, even the World Economic Forum, for example, I am actually a Global Shaper, which is like the youth side of the World Economic Forum, and they have different hubs around the world. So going back to my point, with the World Economic Forum, what the whole conference or forum is about is bringing people from different backgrounds, diverse trainings and professions to come together and debate or discuss global problems and see how our different understandings of the world can actually help alleviate all these problems. People like me, let’s say who are more generalists, just like to delve into everything a bit to have an idea. Maybe it’s a bad thing to be a jack of all trades, but at least it allows a global understanding of things and I think the world is leading towards this path. I’m still young, of course, but after years of dabbling around, I have the desire to also concretize, which is why I’m really looking forward to hopefully by the fall of this year to start a master’s degree in development and that would allow me to also gain not only the practical knowledge that I already have, that I am now gaining, but also the theoretical understanding of the development world.
Safa: In your work so far have there been opportunities where official training was offered in terms of ethical approaches or ethical thinking or have your supervisors ever had a meeting about ethical issues in the work that you were doing? Or is this something that you navigated by yourself or explored yourself?
Pelumi: So up to now, it wasn’t a topic that I actually had a lot of ideas about. To be fair, I think it was just more like intuitive, but recently with, for example, my work with Plan International, I love that the organization emphasizes a lot on this. So even before we started the whole project with them, we had to read and understand their safeguarding measures, their ethical measures and policies. With my experience, this recent one has been the one that has emphasized the most on this, and of course with CIVICUS also. I’m very glad that I can see what methods and measures the different organizations are taking. Most of the time, they’re quite similar but of course they are very context related, so in the case of Plan International, it is very focused on children and youth and with CIVICUS it’s more young activists or just activists in general. Nowadays we also talk about the topic of ethical leadership. So I think they are trying to be more aware of that.
Safa: When you think about the idea or the definition of leadership or the experiences you’ve had being a young leader or experiences you’ve had with other people who are maybe your supervisors, what have been your experiences with what works best or what you think is not being done?
Pelumi: So when it comes to leadership, it’s always a word that I find so big, and I’m like, okay, I’m just a ‘doer’, I follow my gut if I can say that. I don’t like when people say young leader, those are big words, but I understand what they mean by young leader, someone who is doing something. But regarding what our leaders should be doing or maybe not be doing, I think that what we see — again with the coronavirus, is that every problem affects everyone. Most of the time, we see countries pulling out of international agreements or disregarding the rule of law that has been established and just not really thinking of how this affects the whole world. You can start from a little company, whatever you do, the ethical measures you take in your company can also impact other things in the world. So whatever company it is, you know, working with beverages, just for example, when it comes to water sustainability or things like that, it’s also a problem. So I feel like nowadays, it goes back to what I said before about the multi-stakeholder approach. I believe that no leader knows it all, and the best way to grow or to solve issues is with inclusion. So I think that the agendas that politicians or our leaders should be working on nowadays should be more based on an inclusive and collaborative approach and I think the idea of being of service is the most important. So when you think that okay, whatever I do has to be of the benefit of the majority, that has to be key. And some leaders have this in mind and some leaders don’t. But of course, I think that it’s also easy to criticize because once you are in that leadership position, it’s not that easy, I would say. But I think that the best way or the best policy to take is to just create an inclusive approach to the problems we face, which I think already is the goal of many of these big forums or even the G20 for example. What I do think is that we do a lot of conferences and a lot of of speaking and speaking and then when it comes to action, each member state still has to be accountable and I think our accountability processes could be a bit more strict, in general. When governments and member states sign or agree on a specific international agreement, then you can’t just pull out or you can’t just be doing whatever you want, and then you’re signing this. So how do we make them more accountable?
Safa: Absolutely. When you think about the state of the world or the state of the international development sector, do you have any worries about the future or do you feel hopeful and positive in terms of the work that continues to be done?
Pelumi: I don’t remember who said this but I heard a leader saying that you can’t be happy about the state of the world when you actually see the things that are happening, you know? So it depends on the day, there are days when I’m like yay, yes, we’re on the right track, but then there are days where I’m like, okay, we’re not. But I do feel optimistic because the people that I surround myself with or at least the young people that I work with are very eager too and energetic about, if I can say, changing the world or creating change because changing the world is a big agenda. Or just creating change in their immediate surrounding which later on impacts the world as a whole. So I am optimistic because I think that in the world, I really hope I’m right, there are more people willing to do good than there are people willing to do bad. But also it’s not only about the will, but also putting in the effort and having the mechanisms to actually create the change we are talking about. And sometimes, of course, even the government itself creates barriers for this to be done, even in NGOs or in the private sector, the leaders there create some barriers for people to actually implement the change that they desire to create. So we have a long, long way to go. I see more and more cooperation going on. For example, even right now with the COVID-19 crisis, how China was able to deliver aid in terms of masks and other necessary equipments to for example, Italy or Spain. That is scientific and health diplomacy and cooperation. I hope that more and more countries will be willing to help but not only when it’s absolutely necessary but even before, yeah.
Safa: Yes, absolutely. Thank you Pelumi so much for speaking with us and sharing your thoughts and reflections. Do you have anything that you want to share in terms of a final thought or a final reflection?
Pelumi: I hope that listeners find this interesting. And the only thing is in times like these, everyone is desperate thinking what can I do? What can I do? I love the idea of connecting and people engaging with each other. So even if we don’t do something concrete in terms of an action, just engaging with people, a simple message through Linkedin to someone you find interesting or someone who is doing the work would like to do, a simple hello are a simple I admire the work you do, goes a long way and could trigger an interesting and fascinating conversation. So I hope that people will engage more in this type of spontaneous approaching people. And I think that from that we can create more interesting connections that can lead to better changes.
Safa: That is a great point. Thank you again so much for speaking with us and taking the time to be with us and share your thoughts. I also want to thank our listeners. To keep up with our podcast episodes, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify and Google podcast platforms and follow us on Instagram where our handle is @rethinkingdevelopment. If you have any listener questions that you would like me to ask our future guests, please feel free to email them to us. I look forward to having similar conversations with other guests and you all in the weeks to come. Until then, take care.
