GSIPM

DPMI alum Aaron Leonard (MPA ’07) joined the DPMI 10-Year Video Mosaic project by “broadcasting from the top of Yangon,” the former capitol of Myanmar. This is where Aaron works as a senior program manager for PACT, an international organization which focuses on improving health, livelihoods, governance and capacity development all over the world.

Watch his video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCtmZajtNQg

PACT has been working in Myanmar since 1997 and has implemented programs to promote health, livelihoods, community development, microfinance, and food security. In conjunction with Myanmar’s emerging democracy, PACT has created thousands of partnerships in the past 17 years with organizations and community groups to implement many comprehensive and influential projects. In his video, Aaron says that at PACT Myanmar, he “works with local governance and civil society strengthening in a country in major transition.”

Aaron says that his DPMI experience “helped me give voice to the thing that I always wanted to do and didn’t know what to call – capacity development.”

PACT describes its Capacity Development as “putting the power of international best practices in service provision, management, monitoring and evaluation in the hands of people who have a vested interest in the development of their community and who will be there to resolve new challenges as they arise.”  PACT also prides itself on its sustainability. “Years after Pact leaves a village, the community institutions it helped form and develop continue to thrive.” Learn more at http://pactworld.org/.

If you are a DPMI alum and have a story to tell, please contact professional.dev@miis.edu to either submit a video or schedule a time to be recorded.  GSIPM is in the process of collecting video stories for a video collage to commemorate DPMI’s 10 year anniversary. Follow this link to learn more about this project. http://sites.middlebury.edu/dpmi10years/