Hello everyone and welcome to my new blog here in Th!nk 3: Development. Thank you for visiting.  I hope you will enjoy the perspectives I will bring to this competition.

First of all, I want to explain a little about why I am taking part. For the past while, I have been working as a Development Educator at home in Ireland. My job essentially is to teach young people about what life is like in the developing world, in Africa in particular. I love my job and am confident in it’s value to the world we live in. 

I have always been interested in Development (although I didn’t always call it that!) fundraising money when I was young, taking part in debates on these issues and reading widely. In 2007, I got my first on the ground experience working as a volunteer with the presentation Sisters in Kalomo, Zambia. (I will soon post soon pieces on my Zambian experience.)

As you may have already seen, I maintain a blog at http://www.clareherbert.ie which includes my CV.  You can visit there to find out more about me. I am eager to take part in debate and discussion, which you can do either via the comments below or by email to clareherbert1 AT gmail DOT com.

With this blog, I aim to write on a wide range of development topics from the local to the global, hopefully igniting some debate and changing some minds about the issues I care about.

Throughout this process, my inspirtaion has been a quote from Martin Luther King:

“Before you finish eating breakfast this morning... you’ve depended on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured. We aren’t going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact."

To me, this is both invigorating and terrifying. What happens in Botswana effects Brussels, what happens in Israel effects me in Ireland, when the US economy sneezes, countries all over the globe are hospitalized with pnemonia. We are geo-political interwoven. We share one planet, one athmosphere and the earth‘s. limited resources. When they run out, there will be a war. When the climate goes berzerk, we will all suffer but not everyone wil suffer equally. We can already see this in action.

I aim to highlight these connections and explain why we should care, aside from the lefty moral consciousness argument.

Also, and perhaps more importantly, I want to empower you – my readers. I want to signpost you to things that you can do to improve the world we live in. I want you to leave this pages feeling inspired, invigorated and eager to act.

I look forward to the journey, and welcome aboard.