Malik Watkins's Bloglines

Being a firm believer in how we can create and/or select specific experiences to help shape our perceptions and lives, I started this Travel Blog as a way to chronicle the journey as well as share it with others.  My new experience came unexpectedly; however, I’ll embrace it all the same.  This time though, the experience will be both cultural immersion and work 🙂  I’ll be working in Ciudad de Panama, Panama working on a project that is a partnership between the U.S. State Department and the Municipality of Panama through the Fulbright Specialists Program.  As always, I’ll use this experience to bring me closer to being able to see reality 🙂 …. however, I will be working.  The following serves as the project description – a bit technical I know, but here we go…..

This project is designed to promote sustainable development for the City of Panama by supporting the institutional strengthening of the Municipality as it proceeds through a public administration decentralization process.  This will be facilitated by producing a Strategic Action Plan for the development of a prototype geographic information system.  The system will provide support for the public administration process as well as planning and territorial management throughout the municipality.

Project activities involve integrating municipal and local level context and priorities, identifying critical paths for plan development, supporting personnel identification and development as well as coordinating the integration of multiple sectors.  Along with providing training to public personnel on the research findings, additional project objectives include:

• Recommending a program for human resources selection, recruitment and training of additional personnel, exploring potential training collaborations and agreements between the Municipality, the University of Panama and the experts home institution in the United States,
• Advising on specific training, technical assistance, infrastructure and technological requirements of the Strategic Action Plan, and
• Proposing financing options for the formulation and implementation of the Strategic Action Plan.

I will keep you posted!  Hope you can follow along! 🙂

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