JCI president optimistic over Maldives development awareness following visit

The President of Junior Chamber International (JCI) has claimed that humanity is in a unique position for the first time in its history to be able to overcome development challenges and other restrictions on “Human Security” that may have been previously beyond its collective abilities.

The claims were made JCI World President Kentaro Harada following his visit to the Maldives last week to look at the organisation’s involvement in local development projects.

The JCI, an NGO which describes itself as a UN-affiliated network of young people and entrepreneurs in their 20s and 30s, claims to have over a quarter of a million members worldwide that work to collaborate on community development projects in their respective countries.

Harada said he believed that the country’s work and awareness of global development projects in fields such as the environment reflected the wider international acceptance and improved technical knowhow for overcoming challenges that once seemed insurmountable – even a few decades ago.

“We can all begin working together with small and medium enterprises in order to find solutions to major development goals,” he said. “There is a very high mountain to climb, but we can achieve this I am sure.”

The JCI president said that while showing such optimism in the 19th or 20th century may have seen him derided as a “crazy person”, he believed that there was a much greater acceptance today of the role young people and enterprises could play in working towards meeting goals outlined by organisations like the United Nations.

Maldives visit

Harada himself spent two days in the Maldives last week as part of a wider tour of JCI member nations during 2011, having already visited 13 countries since New Year. He used his Maldivian visit to view initiatives such as education and environment programmes that were being managed locally.

Visiting certain projects along with JCI Maldives President, Shaneez Saeed, Harada said that he had been pleasantly surprised during a school visit by statistics that claim 40 per cent of the Maldivian students were aware of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.

“In most countries, around just one percent of the similar population know these goals,” he said.

Rather than a spot of last minute revision, Harada believed that the Maldives’ apparent success in detailing the eight UN objectives, based around attempts to try and globally cut poverty and hunger, combat diseases such as HIV/AIDS, improve child health and universal education and ensuring gender equality, all stemmed from concerns about the country’s long-term geographic stability.

“The main reason I believe [that these goals are commonly known in the Maldives] is down to environmental sustainability,” he said. “I remember breaking news all over the world of your government having underwater meetings. It is the efforts of groups and business working to these goals that have made these objectives well known.”

Although the JCI aims to work with business and organisations at local level to try and encourage various development programmes, the organisation claimed that the growing ease of connecting with others through social networking and the internet made communication about development challenges much easier.

Despite upholding differences between countries like the Maldives and Harada’s native Japan in terms of cultural identity, the NGO’s president said he still believed that it was vital for groups like the JCI to help try and foster mutual understanding between different nations and communities.

Shaneez Saeed, who heads the work of the JCI in the Maldives, told Minivan News following last week’s visit how training schemes brought to the country from other nations were highlighting possibilities for mutal understanding.

Saeed, used the example of a training programme held this month where parents were being encouraged to listen more to the views of children as successful examples of overturning nationally held beliefs.

Harada conceded that despite his overall optimism for global development initiatives such as those promoted by the JCI, there was significant work required to improve human security both nationally and internationally to ensure that everyone was able to have a “daily peaceful life”.

“This is true not only in the Maldives, but in Asia, Africa and all over the world. We cannot ignore that awful things happening in this world that require attention,” he said. “Since the end of the cold war, we have seen national governments trying to evade human rights.”

Nonetheless, Harada claimed that governments, businesses and everyday citizens had unprecedented opportunities to achieve significant steps forward in human development globally.

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12 thoughts on “JCI president optimistic over Maldives development awareness following visit”

  1. please stop publicizing these ppl. they're all talk and no action. atleast that goes for the maldives branch. the handful of self-important people get together and make grandiose plans that never materialize into anything concrete. talking from experience. been there, heard that.

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  2. @vizier:
    well, just being there wont impact the world..
    so people like vizier who just visits to NGO's Like JCI as an 'Tourist' wont know what they are doing and how hard they are working to meet with its goal.. sometimes they fail to do as they plan, bt dat doesnt mean they will let the plans fail and just give up n runaway like some ppl do...Everyone has there personal interests, bt when working in an organization u need to have some kind of behavior which will lead u to have a mutual understanding and respect within the organization.. if ur failed to have that then ur failed to do so... and just an idea doesn't make things happen, but the work does.. who knows the reality? u never knw unless u really get involve in the process of planning till evaluation... so stop judging, n get involve..
    be better!!

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  3. JCI & JCI Maldives provides opportunities... its the responsibility of Individuals to take the initiative & use those opportunities to make themselves & the community a better place.

    JCI & JCI Maldives is about positivity - positive change within individuals, groups, organizations, communities, nations & the world...

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  4. All these platitude-spouting lovey dovey hug-a-bug clubs are for idiots who would shoulder the weight of a heartless debutante's political aspirations.

    No point in going on about which pointless exercises make the headlines of which news outlets for which reasons.

    Let's just get on with our lives and do our best to ignore the JCI's of the world.

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  5. I dnt understand why all the hatred. Atleast some people are trying to do the right things while some people have no life rather than criticize the work of others rather than joining in an help make a difference, an impact. So in the wise words of some dude "Kameh nukuraa thaaga ehen meehun kuraa kanthakah anga nubaanaa, maithirivegen thibey" Thanks, thats all.

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  6. Kameh kurun (doing something) = working in Maldivian industries, bearing and rearing children, funding community-based efforts for social development.

    Kameh nukurun (being pretentious) = playacting in wonderfully named organizations with no real bearing on the social realities of the country.

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  7. For your information hittey and aisha, i'm commenting as someone who has worked and been heavily involved with NGOS for the past 15 years, and who has traveled and worked with CBOs all over the country, not just criticizing for the fun of it. I have done more than my share of contributing to these causes. Writing their proposals, drawing up their budgets, monitoring their projects and providing assessments as well as training, is more than what you'd call being a tourist, dont you think? I've done all this, and I ontinue to follow NGO activities closely, so I happen to know what NGOs genuinely put effort and perform to get results, and what NGOs just do it for show. would appreciate if you kids spare me the lecture on " some kind of behavior " required to work in an organization.I've been involved since you kids were probably in primary school, where you obviously didnt master any grammar skills from what I can see.

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  8. I asked why join JCI. They answered .. to wear nice suits and go to functions.

    Maybe they just missed out on proms.

    I asked what benefit that it will give me in my field if I join JCI.

    They tell me that I can many projects if I work hard to get them.

    I can get them anyways .. stupid people!

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  9. I once saw a presentation about JCI. It was all about Thomas Edison and Einstein. Whatever does it have to do with them?

    It's a brain wash thing.

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  10. Lately I met a teenage JCI member. He thinks the whole relief effort in Japan is carried out by JCI. So I asked him why their president is in Male'. He had no answer.

    It's a brain wash thing.

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  11. They told me all the big owners and directors of Toshiba and all these tech firms are JCI members and they discuss on new technologies and etc in their meetings. They told me that I can hear them talk when I join JCI!

    Hahahahah!!!! How can these people be so ridiculous!?

    Tsk Tsk .. I agree!

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