Wednesday 20 February 2008

Made a small bit of a difference

As a consultant, one is not spoilt for successes. When one begins this career, one thinks that wow - I can really make the difference here which I always wanted to do at home, but there I was always thwarted by civil service rules etc.

Abroad you are instead, most of the time, thwarted by other people's fear, dodgy political systems where a policy problem might cost someone their career, lack of understanding, you are running too fast for people to keep up or they don't quite understand where you are coming from (study tours are wonderful for helping people to see things differently, and suddenly identifying the potential (also barriers) of their own society).

So I was a little bit gratified to hear that a bit of research I did last year, and a few calculations I made, will actually increase the income of possibly the 1000 poorest families in Georgia (about another half million poor families to go, but they are beyond the scope of my project).

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