Addressing Challenges in Liberia
by Syon Bhanot, News Editor on September 17, 2008 in News
12 Students Put HKS Skills to Work
Just a few weeks after taking their last finals, Claire Applegarth (MPP2) and Tamara Heimur (MPA/MBA) found themselves in a Liberian government car, inching through the streets of Monrovia. Soccer fans filled the streets, making it almost impossible for their car to move.
“It was insane how many people there were,” said Applegarth. “We found out the next day that ten people suffocated to death at the game.”
This experience was just the beginning for 12 Kennedy School students who spent the summer working as interns for the government of Liberia. Following in the footsteps of seven HKS students who spent the summer of 2007 in the country, the HKS interns spent time in various government ministries, including the Ministries of State, Finance, and Education. Some worked on targeted projects involving multiple ministries; for example, Applegarth worked on a conference and summit event on women’s leadership, which brought together a variety of government and non-government players.
HKS has close ties with the Liberian president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first-ever female head of state in Africa. A graduate of the school (MPA ’71), Johnson Sirleaf delivered the commencement address at the Kennedy School this past June.
The difficulties facing Liberia are severe. After enduring two destructive and prolonged civil wars, the Liberian government is currently trying to rebuild a wrecked economy and repatriate hundreds of thousands of people who were displaced by conflict.
“The government has many issues they are trying to deal with, and nowhere near the resources they need,” said Heimur, who had worked previously in Iraq, Ecuador, and Ghana. “It is one of the more challenged countries I have worked in.”
“Liberia was culturally similar to other countries in West Africa, but Monrovia had a sort of cold edge,” said Applegarth, who worked in Benin in 2007. “There was some lingering post-conflict tension, and the fact that practically every third car was a UN truck really reinforced that.”
Often, HKS interns had to overcome significant logistical and technological obstacles to get their work done. “In my office, we had just one Internet connection to share between 15 people, and it didn’t work half of the time,” said Conchita Galdon (MPA/ID2). “Just sending one e-mail could take the whole day.”
Despite these challenges, students were excited about the level of responsibility they were given in their jobs, with many saying their positions exceeded expectations.
“The flipside of the country and the government having such great needs is that you have tremendous responsibilities as an intern,” said Heimur. “We had access to most of the ministers in the government, and also met the president.”
“My work was really high level, almost scarily so,” said Laura Bacon (MPP2). “Another intern and I were tasked with the assessment of structures and mandates at the Ministry of Gender and Development. We went department by department, looking into what was working and what wasn’t.”
Bacon’s final report was used as the basis for both a two-day government workshop on ministry structures and a resource workbook for streamlining the work of the Liberian cabinet.
“I never expected to have such a significant impact,” said Bacon. “It was rewarding to make an actual difference.”
Galdon believes her experience was a perfect complement to the coursework at HKS. “The first year of the MPA/ID program was very theoretical,” she said. “We learned a lot about constraints, for example, from an economic theory perspective. To actually go to a country and see all that materialize into real-life things, like human capability constraints, was striking. It made the things I learned last year ‘real,’ in a way.”
Bacon said she was also struck by how much the MPP core was relevant to her work. “I wasn’t really expecting it, but I ended up using a lot of skills and tools from my first year at the Kennedy School. My internship incorporated many things I picked up in the core politics and management courses, in particular.”
An added benefit to the internships that students cited was the living situation – all HKS interns shared one large house in a compound in Monrovia.
“It was a great experience living with such a mature and inspiring group,” Bacon said. “I got to know the other students in ways that I never would have in Cambridge.”
The HKS interns universally regarded their experience as a valuable one. “You don’t really appreciate the challenges developing countries face until you are in one, trying to get things done,” said Heimur. “I think it’s a very important perspective for us to have as students of government and policy.”
“It sharpened my desire to work on development issues,” said Bacon. “I can’t wait to bring my summer experiences back into the classroom and build on them even more.”
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whats the challenges in Liberia??
what should
i do???