The Justice

Media Credit: Asher Krell Dr. Arthur Holcombe spoke at the Heller School last Friday.

Dr. Arthur Holcombe, president of the Tibet Poverty Alleviation Fund, spoke to students and other community members last Friday about poverty alleviation approaches for nongovernmental organizations in the first talk of the Friday Speaker Series at the Heller School of Social Policy and Management. The speaker series is organized by the Master of Arts program in Sustainable International Development.

Before establishing the TPAF, Holcombe worked with the United Nations in several capacities, including a stint as a representative of the United Nations Development Program.

Holcombe said that what he was trying to communicate during his presentation was that "by an approach of our organization working with local government and working with community leaders, we could develop partnerships by which we could address basic needs of particularly poor households."

During his talk, Holcombe discussed the Millennium Development Goal program, which he described as "an approach to human development worked out with heads of state at the U.N. in New York in the year 2000." The program focuses on the achievement of certain priority goals, including the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, achievement of universal primary education, promotion of gender equality, reduction of child mortality, improvement of maternal health, combating of HIV/AIDS and other diseases, assurance of environmental stability and the development of a global partnership for development.

"What I was trying to show was that it was possible to take what was being highlighted in the millennium goals and relate it back to the community needs in two townships in Shangri-la County in Yunnan province [in China]," said Holcombe.

To achieve some of the goals laid out in the Millennium Development program, TPAF aims to create a sustainable livelihood improvement, support environmental protection and preserve the Tibetan culture in 1,500 poor households.

Holcombe said that TPAF feels that it is important to cooperate with governments and NGOs because cooperation is an important element in achieving "longer-term continuity of the kind of work we are doing and its expansion and replication elsewhere."

Other planned speakers include Steven Block, associate professor of International Economics at Tufts' Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Joanne Dunn, executive director of the North American Indian Center of Boston. Topics of discussion range from rural development and food security to the availability of higher education. Prof. Susan Holcombe (HELLER) told the Justice in an e-mail that the series is "primarily for the Master of Arts students but open to other students and faculty."

Master of Arts in Sustainable International Development student Isabel Joao (GRAD) made the concluding remarks at the Holcombe event.

Joao wrote in an e-mail to the Justice, "The talk was an echo of what we have been learning and encouraged to do inside the classrooms and certainly add a very pertinent, practical and refreshing insight into our own perspectives as development practitioners."

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