News & Blogs
Liberia Workforce Visit. Boston, Massachusetts, June 2-14, 2008
The Center for Democracy and Development has completed a very successful Workforce Development for Liberia Program in Boston and Worcester. During their two week visit, the Liberian delegation, which included representatives from government, women’s groups, educational institutions, and NGOs, visited the Massachusetts State House and met with Reps. Daniel Bosley and Byron Rushing, House Speaker DiMasi, Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development Bump, and representatives from labor and community groups. At UMass Boston, they visited the Labor Resources Center, the Urban Scholars program and GoKids Boston. Labor Resources Center staff then arranged meetings at the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation, Women in the Building Trades, the Building Materials Resource Center, and the IBEW Local 103 Training Center. The delegation attended the Women, Wages and Work Conference, organized by the MGS Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy. They visited the Women at Work Program and St. Margaret’s House within St.Mary’s Women and Childrens Center in Dorchester. They enjoyed a very well attended and substantive welcoming ceremony and panel discussion at Worcester State College. In Worcester they also visited the YMCA of Central Massachusetts, Worcester Technical High School, New England Regional Council of Carpenters Training Center and local enterprises. Follow-up programs in Liberia are planned for the fall of 2008.
The Liberian Workforce Development project is sponsored by the US Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Delegation with friends at the University of Massachusetts' President's Office.
June 26, 2008 — vol. 43, no 46
YouthBuild Boston staff and students recently met three times with a delegation sent to Boston by the US Department of State for a visit coordinated by Dr. Edmund Beard of the University of Massachusetts. The delegation came to Boston charged with collecting information that will boost workforce development and education efforts in their country as it emerges from 14 years of civil war. (Back row, from left): James Bonds, Mulbah Jackollie, Ken Smith, Greg Mumford, state Rep. Byron Rushing, Francis Maweah, Beard. (Front row, from left): Charlotte Evangelynn Kaicora, Vida H. Bracewell, Musu Sharon Kardamie, Tomaa Davis, Francis N. Maweah. (Photo courtesy of YouthBuild Boston)
New Grant
The Center for Democracy and Development (CDD) has been awarded a $1.6 million grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for a three year project to improve the quality of justice in China through enhanced judicial education.
Edmund Beard, CDD Director and Senior Advisor in the UMass President's Office, is principal investigator. Erica White, Assistant Director of CDD, will serve as project manager. Adria Warren, a private attorney formerly with the American Bar Association, and retired Massachusetts Judge Peter Anderson (now a Visiting Fellow at CDD) will be project co-Directors. The Massachusetts Judges Conference, the private association of the State's judges, and the American Bar Association will play important roles in the project, which will focus on the three substantive areas of: (1) applying rules of evidence in Chinese court procedures and developing enhanced court management and utilization of pre-trial discovery; (2) improving capacity to implement mediation practices currently being discussed as China reforms the Administrative Litigation Law and Civil Procedure Law; and (3) improving access to Chinese courts through greater transparency of adjudication.
This large, new USAID project builds upon eight years of unique and highly successful U.S. State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs supported rule of law programming in China by the Center for Democracy and Development and the Massachusetts Judges Conference.
Welcome New Visiting Fellows
Ms. Adria Warren welcomed as Visiting Fellow. Ms. Warren will serve as USAID co-Project Director and currently in private practice with Foley & Lardner LLP. She has seventeen years of experience living in and working with China. Most recently, she served as the Washington-D.C. based Project Manager for the ABA's China and Cambodia programs, where she oversaw 62% increase in secured funding with $1.15 million in total grants under management in 2005. She is currently a Vice-Chair for the China Committee of the ABA's Section of International Law.
Honorable R. Peter Anderson, (Ret.) welcomed as Visiting Fellow. Judge Anderson will serve as co-Director of the USAID Enhanced Judicial Education in China project. He has as participated in CDD/Massachusetts Judges Conference (MJC) rule of law programs in China, Mongolia, and the Slovak Republic, and was co-leader of the CDD/MJC 2003 and 2005 Mock Trial Programs in China. He has traveled independently to China several times and was key in developing the 2006 Beijing-to-Boston Program, which brought six Chinese judges to Boston for a unique three-month judicial internship program. In spring 2008, Judge Anderson will travel to Kunming China as Fulbright scholar.
Appointments
Michael Keating, Associate Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Development, has been named as a special consultant on a World Bank Mission in Liberia. Building on his previous work with the media sector in Liberia, Michael will assist the World Bank on a Development Communications strategy on behalf of the Ministry of Information as well as with other media related organizations. This project follows the successful CDD project in the Fall of 2007 which brought several leading Liberian journalists to Boston for a series of seminars and internships.
“The September 2003 Rule of Law exchange in China sponsored by the United States State Department, which I had the privilege of participating in with a number of my colleagues, was one of the most successful and stimulating educational programs I have ever been a part of -- an unparalleled learning experience both for the American judges who presented the program and for the literally thousands of Chinese students, professors and judges who attended. In every venue we were warmly received, and in several venues the reception was literally (almost physically) overwhelming. The unequivocal message from the students, professors and many judges was that they were eagerly looking to us for ideas to reform their judicial system.” —Hon. Timothy H. Gailey
September 2003