Aligning with the Sustainable Development Goals from an organisational perspective: an interview with Mr Stefan Burkhardt and Mrs Julia Berger from the Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSF)
An Interview by Dhruti CHAKRAVARTHI
The Hanns Seidel Foundation, founded in 1967, is a German political foundation, providing political education “in the Service of Democracy, Peace and Development” in Germany and abroad. HFS has been working for more than 40 years in the field of development cooperation and is currently taking an active part in 80 projects in 55 countries worldwide. The Hanns Seidel Foundation was one of the partner organisations in the 23rd ASEF Summer University on “Liveable Cities for a Sustainable Future” project. Ms Dhruti Chakravarthi, alumni of ASEF’s Education Department, had the pleasure of interviewing Mr Stefan Burkhardt, Head of Division for South / Southeast Asia and Mrs Julia Berger, Resident Representative at Hanns Seidel Foundation Indonesia.
Dhruti Chakravarthi: The Hanns Seidel Foundation has contributed to multiple sectors across the globe, including civic engagement in local governments and federalism. What do you think is the importance of hosting projects like the ASEF Summer University to realise these core democratic visions?
Julia Berger: The ASEF Summer University was a brilliant project, because on the one hand, it focused on young people and the participation of young people in tackling societal challenges. Young people have very innovative ideas and solutions to existing problems and they come up with very unique perspectives, which decision makers of older generations do not necessarily have. One core value of democracy is participation, and an active democracy requires active participation. That is why by definition, this project was very close to our heart. In addition, HSF would like to tackle the topic of sustainable cities further in the future. We are currently developing an internal environment strategy and the topic of sustainable cities will be part of it. Following ASEFSU23, we now have a great network to start with, including the University College Cork in Ireland and university partners in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. Furthermore, we are glad to collaborate with ASEF which has international programme experience and is based in Singapore, a sustainable city.
Stefan Burkhardt: If I may add here: As a political foundation, we do have a mandate in fostering exchange and cross-regional collaboration which we could realise with this project. First, the ASEFSU23 was a collaboration between stakeholders from Germany, Europe and Asia. Without doubt, the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) was a natural partner for such endeavour. Second, as Julia already mentioned, the Summer University was a collaboration of young people that integrated the innovative points by the youth into discussions. Third, the focus on sustainable cities fits well into our programme portfolio in Indonesia and our work on identifying key drivers for change and new, positive societal developments. Looking more deeply at sustainability, it is not only a question of technical advancements. Sustainable cities need civic engagement on a local level and sustainable development is often driven by citizens. In this regard, HSF has been supporting a few projects on city development in India for several years. From the perspective “only a safe city is a smart city”, HSF has for example been engaged in projects concerning safety of children and women and facilitated multi-stakeholder co-operations between different stakeholders, including the civil society, the police and the government.
Dhruti: Building off on these insights, what are the key project areas of work that the organisation looks forward to working towards in the future?
Stefan: I respond to this question from my perspective as the Head of Division of South/ Southeast Asia, and not from an overall institutional point of view. Our mission very much focuses on ‘coming together’ of different stakeholders and ‘collaboration’ — in a geographic dimension, thematic dimension and participants’ dimension. For this, The Hanns Seidel Foundation is cooperating with a wide range of stakeholders and partners worldwide in different work areas.
Globally, we are facing huge challenges, with climate change being one of most pertinent ones. The state of the cities and climate change are quite interestingly interrelated. At the same time, we do have a great backlash on democracy and the rule of law. Tackling topics such as sustainable cities might serve as an opener for discussions and developments by facing common challenges between those cities, even though they are located in different countries with different political systems. When people of different generations from all relevant stakeholder groups, ranging from high-level politicians to young leaders., when people from different geographical and thematic backgrounds come together, they exchang views in a transparent and open environment. Therefore, the focus on sustainable cities it is not only about technical questions and technical solutions. And the Hanns Seidel Foundation is not per se an institution implementing technical solutions. We are an institution that helps to tackle potentially ineffective structures, for example on a city level how these can be better handled. This is how we connect the geographical dimension, the thematic dimension and the participant dimension and aim to achieve the goal of ‘coming together’. Of course you can apply this to different work areas. As you might know key areas of our work in the region besides environmental policy are the topics of federalism, a citizen oriented police, parliamentary exchange and non-traditional security issues on a national, regional and inter-regional level between Asia and Europe.
Dhruti: Thank you for your insights. They also give our readers great perspectives on how to integrate different intersectional areas in order to strategize towards building policies for sustainable development. With regard to this, what do you think is the biggest takeaway from projects like ASEF Summer University that can help students and organisations like yours to align with the SDGs?
Stefan: As Julia pointed out, when we are designing our projects, we always collaborate with our partners. We are mapping those projects and analyse how they fit into the framework of Agenda2030 and the indicators of the SDGs. By developing projects and preparing project frameworks, we always think about the SDGs, and how the project goals contribute achieving the SDGs. Of course, the SDG agenda is quite huge. However, by supporting projects that create and promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies, we are making a contribution towards SDG 16 which is, of course, one of the main drivers of our engagements worldwide.
Concerning the biggest takeaway for the students? Well their own contribution and the interaction with all other participants is probably the biggest takeaway for them. Creating their ideas and solutions for pressing challenges, to present them, getting feedback is more than practical way to align with the SDGs. They not only talked about it on a theoretical level, the acted.
Dhruti: And finally, if you have any key message that you’d like to share with the participants, that would be great.
Julia: The key message I would like to share with the participants is that, as a co-organiser, I was really amazed about the level of participation. Despite the ongoing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and the transformation to mainly online events, it was great to see how the participants were still so engaged during all training sessions and discussions. I could feel that it was very vibrant project. Without doubt, it was quite regrettable that there was no chance to bring the participants together in person and to meet. Maybe such opportunity will arise in the future.
I hope that the participants can keep up that spirit and I would like to encourage them to engage wherever they come from. All of them have very different backgrounds. Some were professionals who already worked for tech companies, others were architects, others were university students. ASEFSU23 brought them together to a really big brainstorming cloud. This opportunity of collaboration of people from different countries in different continents, and different backgrounds was what I think really made the Summer University very special. Therefore, I do hope that everybody is staying in contact, and that the collaboration could continue in some way in the future.
Mr Stefan BURKHARDT is heading the Division South / Southeast Asia since 11/2017. Before that he worked in the Division of Policy Issues for several years. He studied in Leipzig and Stockholm Political Science, Journalism and Political Economy.
Having always had a curiosity for different cultures and societies, Mrs Julia BERGER’s educational background stems from her Master in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Hamburg in Germany, complemented by minors in African Studies and Politics. Her career for the Hanns Seidel Foundation started in Ghana over 10 years ago. Since then she has held various positions as Programme Manager for Plan International in Germany and as Resident Representative of Hanns Seidel Foundation Tanzania which allowed her to gather experiences in a wide field of engagement, ranging from skills training on climate change & mitigation to women empowerment and capacity building in social entrepreneurship. Mrs Berger has managed various public and privately funded programmes with state and non-state actors across 15 different countries worldwide. She is looking forward to gathering new experiences in the ASEAN region and to contribute strengthening the Foundation’s engagement in the whole of Asia.
Ms Dhruti CHAKRAVARTHI has recently completed a Fellowship at Stanford University in effective altruism and applied compassion. She graduated from the University of Edinburgh with an MA (Hons) in Sustainable Development and Social Anthropology. With a keen interest in the intersections of international development and applied altruism, she recently worked with The Economist as a climate expert for their schools’ outreach programme leading up to COP 26 in Glasgow.
NOTE:
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely by the author(s) and do not represent that of the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF).
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