Posted by Huiqiang Zhao on
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
On Wed Aug 11th, the SU Global Engagement Office helped host a discussion forum for the community about how partnership can make a huge impact for community development.
At the beginning, Akhtar Badshah, Senior Director of Microsoft Community Affairs, pointed out economic reset put a lot of stress on systems. For example, Microsoft is relying on partnership and uses its technology to fulfill people’s potential. Microsoft uses partnership to widen its product lines and help train different NGOs around the world to catch up with technology. It was interesting to hear from Steven Jordan, Executive Director, Business Civic Leadership Center. He explained partnership in a new way that I have never heard. He said, “Partnership has to grow within yourself, then it can grow by multiplying the number of individuals and the size of the community. Then leaders in the community should empower young people. All giant companies grow from strategic partnerships.”
In addition, Tayla Bosch, Director of Corporate Responsibility at Western Union, said, “We are big because we have reliable small partners. We listen to what partners need and try to accommodate them to build deep and trusted relationship. By partnering with locals, we are in a better position to compete and make more money, so we can give more funding to different organizations to do more good things.”
As we know, global development has so benefits including promoting peace, creating more jobs which could reduce conflict, creating dependency and interdependency and building prosperity. Community development needs everyone to get involved. It is important to create a sustainable and inclusive R&D center. One person or one company has very limited power, but if we start partnering, I am sure we can do more good for the community locally and globally.
For more information, please visit Global Washington.
Written by Derek Zhao, Email: zhaoh@seattleu.edu