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Are you nervous about networking? Do you feel anxious when it is time for mingle events? If the answer is yes you are not alone. In this article Niklas Ylander writes about the value of networking and how you practice it. Increasing the awareness about its social character you can get by the fear of mingling and making your way through the complex domain of foreign policy.
Networking is an essential part of working life. In multinational organizations networking is a natural phenomenon when you handle contacts with people with different backgrounds. In working life there are always tasks with a short deadline and you need to interact with many people in order to deliver. American statistics also show that 70 per cent of the jobs are mediated by social contacts.
The stereotypical story about networking tends however to be about the man in black suit near the coffee machine at the conference. The initial contact is typical about gaining something concrete from the high rank officer in order to be seen as successful. In contrast to this stereotype the prestige university Yale pinpoint the more sophisticated approach to networking for students:
… not to get a job, it is about establishing professional relationships with people who can give you information and advice, and creating loose bonds with their contacts that may help you with your current search and future career.
Focus is thus on getting information and advice from people that can help you not only here and now but also in the longer perspective. It is also to be introduced to informal contacts where the benefits might be highly ambiguous in the beginning. Networking is more of a natural socializing at work rather than the seldom meeting with the officer in black suit at the coffee machine.
Networking is also by nature a far more broader concept that you exercise when you grab a beer with a new colleague or course participant. Maybe you meet people shortly at an event that you might run by later in another situation. These mediators that you have a loose relationship with are not part of your inner circle, but on the other hand they can introduce you to new people. This is essential in the domain of foreign affairs that by nature involves your relationship itself with other actors.
Meeting people at mingle events can give you information about an important meeting that you should attend or what to prepare in advance. When you are working on the complex project with the short deadline most often you do not have enough knowledge to solve the task on your own. Knowing whom to contact for advice can help you to finish the project.
A narrow approach on networking is problematic when you tend to meet the same people that have similar background as yourself. Your network risks becoming too homogenous without the dynamic component in a mixed environment. From this perspective the mixed composition of people that you meet give you more diverse information and feedback on your ideas.
As an inexperienced student you might blame yourself for exploiting others in your networking to further your ‘egoistic’ interests. However, more senior professionals do not necessarily share that view and focus more on how they can help others. If you as a student or newly graduated you should notice your own contribution and share your own ideas. Then it is easier to make the relationship more mutually beneficial.
A relevant issue is to identify how you can emphasize your contribution during the mingle events with more experienced colleagues. A good advice is to focus on your interests in the field and choose an occasion that you are comfortable with. Maybe you already know what kind of people that will attend a certain meeting. If there will be representatives from an interest group or a state agency present you can prepare in advance what interests they might represent. Then you can have some standard questions in mind that really interest you and that you can use for discussions in depth.
For the more experienced it is appreciated to have the opportunity to talk about their own expert field with someone that really listens. If the conversation would get a more personal tone it could deepen your professional relationship. If you take the conversation into this direction you should be prepared for follow up questions.
Sometimes you can end up talking with for example a very senior diplomat that already has met all world leaders and knows everything of interest. As an intern with no business cards from any presidents you might look for people on your own level that were in your position not long ago. Most often we tend to seek contact with those on our own level and this can be beneficial in the start, especially as a nervous intern. A good advice is to stay close to a newly graduated colleague at your work that can talk about formalities and the hiring process. Later on you will see networking as a more natural process and become more active.
When you are working with a specific project it is easier to note how networking really pays off. The colleagues that you engaged earlier on might now be more open minded for your request for assistance. If you would need to find more specialized competence outside your organization or group for your project it can be relevant to check open sources like LinkedIn, media or branch websites for background information.
After you have started your professional networking you might forget that relationships need to be maintained, especially when you do not meet your contacts in your daily life. As a student or newly graduated it is extra important to keep the contacts alive with professionals that can give you valuable insights in your field. After your internship you can for example invite your supervisor for lunch. The worst answer can simply be a no.
Now when you see networking as a social process with a long term horizon you are far ahead. Seeing the value of networking it is more tempting to interact with others that have information and knowledge that you need. In the long run you will be the one that others approach for advice.
Fighting against poverty: the impact of inflation on households’ purchasing power
Niklas Ylander has a Master’s degree in political science from Uppsala University, Sweden. Writing about diplomacy and networking based on his experience from several Swedish public agencies including internship at Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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Authors: Pablo Acosta and Folha de S. Paulo
As the COVID-19 pandemic began to ease its effects on households across the globe, another crisis started searing: inflation. The costs of food and fuel began rising as early as the second half of 2021 in many countries in the world. By mid-2022, annual inflation was estimated at 9.8 in Europe, 8.5 in the US, and 13.9 in Brazil. Inflation for the LAC region for 2022 is forecasted at 12.1.
Hiking prices lead to loss of purchasing power of households and food insecurity. In Brazil, the costs of food increased by 13.43 percent in the 12 months to August 2022, and the foodstuff consumed at home by 15.63 percent. The effects on such items – which represent between a fifth and a quarter of household’s consumption– were only partly appeased by the increase in nominal average labor incomes in 2022. Thus, food insecurity is estimated to have gone up in 2022, with a projected 15.5 % of households in severe food insecurity, compared to the 9 percent in 2020.
It is against this backdrop that we arrive at another International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, also commonly known as End Poverty Day (October 17th). As the real value of households’ income deteriorates, they can afford to purchase fewer things. Ultimately, the accurate monitoring of countries’ progress towards eradicating poverty rests on our ability to measure whether the population can cover their basic needs.
Reflecting properly the costs of basic needs is key to track and monitor poverty
For a long time, part of the World Bank’s mandate has been to develop knowledge that can inform policy making fostering inclusive and sustainable growth. It is partly due to this fact that the World Bank became the custodian of the indicator of extreme poverty – the measure to monitor Target 1.1 of the Sustainable Development Goal 1 of ending poverty in all its forms everywhere.
Last month, the World Bank published an update to the indicator that is used to track extreme poverty, as well as the poverty lines that it uses to monitor monetary deprivation in countries with higher levels of development. The update was done for two main reasons.
First, due to the availability of price information available for the year 2017 for a broad range of countries – collectively called the International Comparison Program (ICP) – resulting in the publication of the 2017 Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) factors. These factors allow the international comparison of the value of a basket of goods across countries. By incorporating the country-specific costs of living, they offer an improvement from using exchange rates only. The 2017 PPP also incorporated improvements in the quality of price data.
Second, the new release improves upon the methodology used to calculate the poverty lines. The new methodology has several advantages, including the use of poverty lines calculated by national statistics institutes of each of about 30 low-income countries as the main reference to calculate extreme poverty. This approach relies on the most accurate reflection of economic deprivation as captured by the local context in these countries.
While it would be tempting to suggest that a revision of the poverty lines may shift the goalposts of extreme poverty (for instance as expressed by the Atkinson Commission on Global Poverty), a thorough review was conducted and found very small changes with respect to the previous poverty lines.
What does this mean for Brazil?
Between 2011 and 2017, the period between the two PPP calculations, many countries have seen their costs of living increase. The values of the recently published 2017 PPP poverty lines aim to reflect this phenomenon. The international poverty line used to measure extreme poverty is $2.15 per person per day, while the poverty line for upper middle-income countries is $6.85. These lines are equivalent to R$6.01 (in 2021 prices) per person per day and to R$19.16 (in 2021 prices) per person per day, respectively.
The new lines give us better insights on the situation of the vulnerable. While extreme poverty temporarily dropped to 1.9 percent in 2020 – putting Brazil’s poverty among the lowest in the Latin America and the Caribbean region- it is estimated to have bounced back to 5.8 percent in 2021. In turn, the upper middle-income threshold suggests that, using the updated purchase power parity estimates, 18.7 percent of the population were living with less than $6.85 2017 PPP in 2020. While a large share of the population was protected during the pandemic, the new line suggests that about 11.8 million more people could not afford their basic needs. Moreover, the slow labor market and the elimination of Auxilio Emergencial may have contributed to the increase to 28.4 percent the following year. But, does the $6.85 line actually reflects monetary poverty? In fact, the international line of $6.85 may better capture the poor and vulnerable in Brazil. This line is roughly equivalent to R$583 per person per month, just slightly above R$550 – the income threshold that households need to meet to be registered in the Cadastro Unico, the nation’s social registry, and be considered for public assistance.
A final note is worth making. Global poverty lines are used primarily to track global extreme poverty and to measure progress on global goals set by the World Bank, the United Nations, and other development partners. Nonetheless, a country’s national poverty line is still the most appropriate tool to inform policy dialogue or targeting programs to reach the poorest. As Brazil currently does not have an official poverty line, the current inflationary pressure on households’ welfare may be a good reason to jumpstart a dialogue about the importance of defining one.
This article was written in collaboration with Gabriel Lara Ibarra, World Bank senior economist.
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To ponder the question of happiness and happy countries, one can start with the World Happiness Index.
A quick perusal identifies several Scandinavian countries at the top (with Finland leading) and others also with high per capita GDP. Yet that alone is not sufficient for one also encounters anomalies. For example, India’s is higher than for Pakistan, but the latter is listed 66 in the index while India is almost hugging the bottom at 144. Moreover, the other major country in the subcontinent, Bangladesh, for all its turbulent history is still at 107 way ahead of India.
Other anomalies are South Korea and Japan at 62 and 63, far down the list from the other rich countries. Perhaps the cause here is a work ethic and social norms that informally require long hours at work coupled with expected socializing thereafter with colleagues.
Then there is the issue of inequality. One can indeed try to assess the impact of economic inequality through its measure, the Gini Coefficient expressed from 0 to 1. Sometimes it is written in percent terms as a number from 0 to 100 and it is then referred to as the Gini Index.
It matters little to the black South African that he earns more than other sub-Saharan Africans; what matters to him is his income in relation to others in South African society. It was an underlying cause of the riots last year in addition to the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma. The World Bank has named South Africa the most unequal country in the world.
Income inequality in the US has been on the rise since the 1970s when neo-liberalism in the Democratic party undermined the progressive taxes and regulations helping to bolster the middle class as well as safety nets for the poor. Who can forget how welfare was going to be replaced by ‘workfare’ and the stories, legion in the media, about families sitting at home getting ‘rich’ on welfare checks.
Yes, the rich got richer sheltering their money from taxes in the Cayman Islands or the Bahamas or the Isle of Man. Yet at the expense of the poor and the middle class with two-job families becoming the norm, and children in after-school programs because Mom wasn’t there to pick them up.
The World happiness Index summarizes what the neo-liberals achieved: the US is at the bottom of industrialized countries in North America and Europe. Of course an absence of a national health insurance program makes matters worse — it adds to worry, the antithesis of happiness.
An absence of worry, an absence of vast differences in income, social cohesion and a presence of a suitable safety net for when things go wrong. These appear to be the common denominators for happy countries.
And why not a Gross National Happiness (GNH) measure, as in Bhutan, in addition to the GDP. It is a philosophy that guides Bhutan.
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Ten years ago, the Asia-Pacific region came together and designed the world’s first set of disability-specific development goals: the Incheon Strategy to “Make the Right Real” for Persons with Disabilities. This week, we meet again to assess how the governments have delivered on their commitments, to secure those gains and develop the innovative solutions needed to achieve fully inclusive societies.
Ministers, government officials, persons with disabilities, civil society and private sector allies from across Asia and the Pacific will gather from 19 to 21 October in Jakarta to mark the birth of a new era for 700 million persons with disabilities and proclaim a fourth Asian and Pacific Decade of Persons with Disabilities.
Our region is unique, having already declared three decades to protect and uphold the rights of persons with disabilities; 44 Asian and Pacific governments have ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; and we celebrate achievements in the development of disability laws, policies, strategies and programmes.
Today, we have more parliamentarians and policymakers with disabilities. Their everyday business is national decision-making. They also monitor policy implementation. We find them active across the Asia-Pacific region: Australia, Bangladesh, China, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, the Marshall Islands, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Thailand and Türkiye. They have promoted inclusive public procurement to support disability-inclusive businesses and accessible facilities, advanced sign language interpretation in media programmes and parliamentary sessions, focused policy attention on overlooked groups, and directed numerous policy initiatives towards inclusion.
Less visible but no less important are local-level elected politicians with disabilities in India, Japan and the Republic of Korea. Indonesia witnessed 42 candidates with disabilities standing in the last election. Grassroot disability organizations have emerged as rapid responders to emerging issues such as COVID-19 and other crises. Organizations of and for persons with disabilities in Bangladesh have distinguished themselves in disability-inclusive COVID-19 responses, and created programmes to support persons with psychosocial disabilities and autism.
The past decade saw the emergence of private sector leadership in disability-inclusive business. Wipro, headquartered in India, pioneers disability inclusion in its multinational growth strategy. This is a pillar of Wipro’s diversity and inclusion initiatives. Employees with disabilities are at the core of designing and delivering Wipro digital services.
Yet, there is always more unfinished business to address.
Even though we applaud the increasing participation of persons with disabilities in policymaking, there are still only eight persons with disabilities for every 1,000 parliamentarians in the region.
On the right to work, 3 in 4 persons with disabilities are not employed, while 7 in 10 persons with disabilities do not enjoy any form of social protection.
This sobering picture points to the need for disability-specific and disability-inclusive policies and their sustained implementation in partnership with women and men with disabilities.
One of the first steps to inclusion is recognizing the rights of persons with disabilities. This model focuses on the person and their dignity, aspirations, individuality and value as a human being. As such, government offices, banks and public transportation and spaces must be made accessible for persons with diverse disabilities. To this end, governments in the region have conducted accessibility audits of government buildings and public transportation stations. Partnerships with the private sector have led to reasonable accommodations at work, promoting employment in a variety of sectors.
Despite the thrust of the Incheon Strategy on data collection and analysis, persons with disabilities still are often left out of official data because the questions that allow for disaggregation are excluded from surveys and accommodations are not made to ensure their participation. This reflects a continued lack of policy priority and budgetary allocations. To create evidence-based policies, we need reliable and comparable data disaggregated by disability status, sex and geographic location.
There is hope in the technology leap to 5G in the Asia-Pacific region. The implications for the empowerment of persons are limitless: from digital access, e-health care and assistive devices at affordable prices to remote learning and working, and exercising the right to vote. This is a critical moment to ensure disability-inclusive digitalization.
We live in a world of volatile change. A disability-inclusive approach to shape this world would benefit everyone, particularly in a rapidly ageing Asia-Pacific region where everyone’s contributions will matter. As we stand on the precipice of a fourth Asian and Pacific Decade of Persons with Disabilities it remains our duty to insist on a paradigm shift to celebrate diversity and disability inclusion. When we dismantle barriers and persons with disabilities surge ahead, everyone benefits.
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