Info Director Attends WB-IMF Meetings in Washington, DC
Office of Information and Publications Director Mr. Mark Raygan E. Garcia has been invited to participate in the World Bank (WB)-International Monetary Fund (IMF) Annual Meetings in Washington, D.C. on October 5 to 10.
Mr. Garcia is the only Filipino and one of only two delegates invited and sponsored by the WB East Asia and the Pacific (EAP) Region Office. The other delegate is Ms Pansy Thun Thien, a woman's rights advocate and a director of a non-government organization in Myanmar. There are only around 60 civil society representatives from around the world whose attendance in the Annual Meetings is sponsored by the WB, IMF and its affiliate organizations.
The Annual Meetings are conducted every autumn for the Boards of Governors of both WB and IMF to meet and discuss a range of issues related to poverty reduction, international economic development and finance. The Annual Meetings provide a forum for international cooperation and enable the WB and IMF to better serve their member countries. This is also the time when finance ministers, international aid agencies and development workers from different countries convene.
Based on the invitation, Mr. Garcia is expected to help WB enrich its youth outreach and initiatives in the Philippines, with his experience in the Annual Meetings.
Mr. Garcia is an active member of the WB-Knowledge for Development Center Network, a group composed of WB partner universities, National Economic and Development Authority, Philippine Institute for Development Studies, House of Congress and Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation. He has also handled projects for the WB country office. These include a project that trained college students in five universities around the Philippines in monitoring transparency in local government through the Philippine Government Electronic Procurement System (PhilGEPS), and another on private sector funding for proposals from students in Cebu, Iloilo and Dumaguete on household solutions to climate change.
In 2008, Mr. Garcia also attended the Annual Meetings. He was the lone panelist from the Philippines during the first Youth@Annual Meetings where he presented the project on PhilGEPS and the use of the arts in engaging out-of-school youth on their concept of corruption. The same project won a CSF grant of $25,000 from WB Washington.
(Photo shows Mr. Mark Raygan E. Garcia, left, in 2008 with then International Monetary Fund Executive Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn)
Two of the more important events that Mr. Garcia is invited to participate in are the Town Hall Meeting with WB President Jim Yong Kim and IMF Executive Director Christine Lagarde, and a meeting with WB Vice President for EAP Region Axel Van Trotsenburg and other senior staff of WB in the EAP region.
