GENERATIONAL DEMANDS FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT INTRERNATIONAL

History/Formation:

After nine years of service at the Liberia Civil Service Agency, in 2020, Garrison won a tuition waiver scholarship to study Sustainable Development and Management at the master’s level at Nalanda University, Bihar, India. This scholarship offered came after many years of failed attempts by Garrison to attain a full international scholarship to study in Sweden, China, Australia, and America. The unexpected offer came with a dilemma and many challenges.

Garrison’s Dilemma

How to underwrite the costs of living, health insurance, and airfare to get him to India, especially during the global COVID-19 epidemic where India was one of the global epic centers for the epidemic.

Garrison’s Challenges

Garrison’s decided not to let the opportunity slip from him no matter what, he decided to take the risk. He began informing his family about his decision to pursue his academic dream in India but his decision received low approval from his family due to the global risk at the time especially, where India was the most affected country. 

He moves on and shares his plan with his immediate supervisor, Mr. Augustus M. Kamara, the HR of CSA. You have my full blessing, Mr. Kamara responded, but you have to reach out to the Director-General for his approval.  Garrison’s request for study leave to allow him to pursue his academic dreams in India was initially rejected bitterly by the Head of the Agency asserting that Garrison’s position as a Senior HR Officer at the time did not require a master’s degree to perform his duties, and Liberia Civil Service Agency has nothing to do with Sustainable Development and Management as he intent to study. After a repeated engagement with the Director-General, a Committee was set up to investigate while Garrison must be granted study leave.

A few weeks later, the committee came up with their recommendation, indicating that Garrison is still young and needs to be developed in both academic and professional dimensions. His request for study leave should be granted, even if CSA is not currently in a position to consume his skills to be acquired, he can be transferred to another area in the public sector. Even with such committee recommendation, Garrison’s study leave letters disappeared in the most sensitive office of the Director-General two times. However, his study leave was finally granted.

When Garrison returned in June 2022 after the successful completion of his study, he requested permission to make a brief presentation to the senior staff body during their regular Monday senior staff meeting as a culture of the Agency. His request was delayed for a month and a few weeks on the same notion that Sustainable Development skills are irrelevant to Liberia’s Civil Service.

Finally, on the third Monday of July 2022, Garrison was permitted to do a brief ten-minute presentation to the Senior Staff body of the Agency on the importance of sustainable development to the Agency. At the point of sharing his slides, the Director-General walked into the meeting along with a solar energy vendor. Who came to advertise their product, Garrison was asked to pose his presentation and give a chance to the vendor to present, and he obeyed. After all, Garrison was finally permitted ten minutes for his presentation. His presentation outlines:

• Brief overview of the  SDGs
•  Liberia public/civil service and the SDGs
• Possibility for nationalizing/localizing the SDGs into Liberia’s public/civil service
• Benefits of nationalizing the SDGs, and
• Recommendations

Although he was given ten minutes for his presentation, however, the presentation went for over forty –five minutes, receiving many impressive comments from the senior staffer. Yet, Garrison’s recommendation for localizing the SDGs into Liberia’s Public/civil service was cynically rejected. Some senior staff members perceived that Garrison aimed to become a director because he had acquired new skills so he was pushing for the creation of a new division where he could serve as director. Others question his recommendation asking which African countries are involved in public/civil service sustainability that can be used as a case study to support his recommendation. Garrison considered all these obstacles as gaps in his society and elsewhere that required his urgent intervention in a broader scope.

In March 2024, Garrison decided to establish a civil society organization that would give him a broader platform to advocate for sustainable development in Liberia and the globe. He named the CSO: Generational Demands for Sustainable Development International (Gen-Demands-For-Sustainability), with a mission to advocate and support public and private institutions to embed sustainability into their strategy and operations and place them on the path of achieving sustainable Development.