Now What Exactly Are You Doing In Samoa?

Source: http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/samoa.htm

With over ten hours of flying and airplane layovers ahead of me before I arrive in Hawaii, I certainly have ample time to write my first blog post! Let’s start with the basics: what I’ll be doing as a Fulbright-Clinton Fellow in Samoa and what I’ll be writing about in this blog.

The Fulbright-Clinton Fellowship is a specialized program under the umbrella of the general Fulbright program. Originally titled the Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship when it was inaugurated in 2012, it offers Fellows the opportunity to have a professional placement within a government ministry of a partnering country. (There are currently about a dozen participating countries that range from the African Union to Kazakhstan to Samoa!) This placement is determined based on a Fellow’s background, interests, and areas of expertise.

I will spend roughly 4/5 days working with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, with that time being divided between the Legal Division and the Global Environmental Facility Division. My exact duties will be decided after I arrive and meet with my supervisors, but generally speaking, I will be helping with work on new climate change legislation and incoming climate change-related grants.

The remaining day is reserved for an independent research project. There is a lot of flexibility with the exact nature and topic for this project, so that is also something that I will pin down more concretely once I arrive, see what exactly I’ll be working on, etc. For the moment, I’m hoping to research the monitoring and evaluation of Samoa’s climate change goals.

I have been interested in monitoring and evaluation ever since I took a course on randomized evaluations of development programs as part of my graduate studies and was introduced to the research of Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. Their book Poor Economics provides a really good overview of their research and main findings – which are often not what you would predict! Their central premise is that “...it is possible to make very significant progress against the biggest problem [poverty] through the accumulation of a set of small steps, each well thought out, carefully tested, and judiciously implemented” (p. 15 of Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo).

I chose the title “Accumulating Small Steps” for this blog as a nod to this line in Poor Economics. I’m hoping that through this blog, I can share with you my “small steps” or experiences as I seek to help make progress against some core challenges for international development today.

So over the next ten months, I’ll be keeping you updated about my work, research, and day-to-day life in Samoa. Please keep in touch as well and let me know what you’re up to by leaving a comment at the end of this post or by shooting me an e-mail. My internet access is going to be limited, so I may be a bit slower in getting back, but I will be very happy to get your news!

And if you want to follow my posts without having to remember to check back, you can enter your e-mail address at the bottom of this page, and you’ll get a notification every time I post something new.

Next post, I’ll tell you more about the rest of my trip (including my day layover in Hawaii!) and my first days settling into life in Apia, Samoa.