Breakfast event with the NGOs' representative

Thank you message (To everyone who has made this project happen)

Follow-up (Meeting with 8 NGOs)

*EXPLORA

Desarrollo y Participación

*Comisión Justicia y Paz

Mujeres de Partidos Políticos

*ANCON

Educación y Capacitación

Movimiento Nueva Generación

*PROBIDSIDA

After the breakfast event has ended, we were realized that the mission was not actually end yet. We had two more days to get this project done, the follow-up meeting with 8 NGOs still on the way and we were eager to be on the road. We had arranged the meeting by the diversity of their concentration fields. We have collected some completed applications and promised to carry them back to New York. The visiting gave us an in-depth view of their works, we were touched by many inspiring stories, have shared their frustrations but all of those has ended with high hope. We left each NGO with smile not only on our face but also within our mind, we realized even stronger that our mission has accomplished at least one step and that we hope for many in the near future.

* Click links to their websites; get to know them and find out how is real work on the ground can make such a big differnce

The objective
The objective of the NGO/DPI Executive Outreach Project is to identify and recruit NGOs in Panama to affiliate with the DPI/NGO section at the UN Headquarter in New York City. Graduate students from Long Island University’s United Nations Graduate Certificate Programme has spent one week in Panama and meet representative NGO candidates. The Executive Committee will support their affiliation applications.

The programme had made a significant achievement with the frist project in Costa Rica, 2007 and we once again see this as the opportunity to expand our work to other countries in Latin America. Panama is one of the most potential country that has been very active on the civil society profile. There are quite numbers of the NGOs in Panama, the country has however only two NGOs that have been affiliatted with the UN. Therefore, we determine to increase that number and by making this effort, our "LIU and NGO/DPI Executive Committee Outreach Project" will be a stepping stone that leads us to the goal.

Panama with the View (Photos by Thom)

Panama photo by Thom
The southernmost country of Central America which situated on an isthmus, it is the land that connect the Central America to the South America. It boders Costa Rica to the north-west, Colombia to the south-east, the Carribbean sea to the north and the Pacific ocean to the south. It is an international business centre, a transit country which is the most industrialized in Central America.

Government : Constitutional Democracy
President : Martin Torrijos
Population : 3,320,000

City of knowledge (Ciudad de Saber)
Photo by Thom
The City of Knowledge is part of the rich tradition that Panama´s society accumulated over the years in an effort to establish education as the instrument to human´s development throughout the Twentieth Century. While during its origins, Panama´s effort was linked to the organization of the educational system, required by the fledgling republic to shape its State and to provide its economy with qualified the century, the country began pondering the need to find the means necessary to associate itself with the new challenges posed by the global economy, in which knowledge has developed into a first rate productive force.

CINUP(Centro de Informacion de las Naciones Unidas en Panama)

The United Nations cannot reach its purposes if the peoples of the world are not fully informed of its aims and activities. In the 1946 resolution, the Department of Public Information has been established, the Department was requested to open branch offices to ensure that people in all parts of the world receive the most complete information possible on the work of the United Nations. CINUP is the network of United Nations that working as the centre for the information of the organizations all over Panama. It is the place that link the headqurters with the locals in order to allow them to obtain the information and activities, CINUP office is located in City of Knowledge.

picture by Thom

Working Space photo by Thom
Not only a warm welcome from the people at CINUP that quickly transformed us from the foreigners into their friends within no time but also the cozy and spacious office here that had allowed us to performed our tasks smoothly and effectively. One of the room at CINUP has suddenly turned to be our working space and only few minutes after we arrived it has already filled with stationary, papers and everything else that we would need for our work. Throghout 7 days of hard work, it had been a greateful moment for us and our mission would never been accomplished without their helps.

The Accommodation Photos by Thom
It was the old millitary base which situated on the opposite site of the road to the Panama Canal. The disciplinary feeling has never gone away from the site, it has been only 9 years since the day that US. Armed Force had made the depature from this place. Besides the organizations, school and facilities the place has quite the number of accommodations, they provide the rooms for anyone who is looking for a peacful, clean and 24 hours security during the visit to Panama. We as well had landed ourselve in this place, if only some of their disorganized systems could have been undermined the place had actually left us such a wonderful memory. Thank you to Senorita America, one of the security gauard who had never dropped her smile, a lift from the security car the night that we were starving but could not find a taxi to the restuarant and the helps that had never been out of reach during those 7 days.