Jac Stienen is made a Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau

The Mayor of Wassenaar, Jan Hoekema, presented the award in recognition of Jac Stienen’s personal dedication and commitment to IICD during the last eight years, describing him as a ‘catalyst for sustainable development’.

It was under Jac Stienen’s leadership that IICD emerged as a major player on both the national and international development scene. During his term of office, IICD set up over 130 ICT for Development projects in 9 developing countries and witnessed a two-fold increase in staff at its Secretariat in The Hague.

“A motivated and solid team and a process through which information and communication technologies (ICTs) are helping millions of people in developing countries” is how Stijn van der Krogt, Director Country Programmes at IICD and fellow-colleague of Jac Stienen for the last eight years, summed up Stienen’s legacy.

The symposium not only marked Jac Stienen’s retirement but also served as an introduction to his successor, Ms Caroline Figuères, who praised Stienen for the concrete results he had achieved during his term of office and for leaving behind such a dynamic, innovative and forward-looking organisation.

Presentations were also made by key figures from the development sector including the former Dutch Minister for Development, Jan Pronk who founded IICD in 1996, and Manuela Monteiro, Director of HIVOS.

Reflecting upon the past…

Reflecting upon his inauguration speech ten years ago, when IICD was first established, Jan Pronk outlined some of the main tasks the institute set itself. These included:

• helping developing countries to become creators of information, not just recipients;
• helping people in the developing world to use ICTs to promote development initiatives based on their own terms and conditions;
• using ICTs to promote the participation of people in developing countries in the development process; and
• using ICTs to tap into and share local knowledge.

A vision for the future…

To the delight of the audience, Pronk went on to share his vision of the future for IICD: a future in which IICD would develop more activities in Arabic and Islamic countries, focus more intensely on governance and human rights, and concentrate on under-represented groups such as women.

The importance of partnerships

The recurring theme throughout many of the presentations was the importance of partnerships: partnerships at the grass-roots level in developing countries, partnerships with public and private sector bodies, partnerships with like-minded organisations. Likeminded organisations such as HIVOS with whom IICD has collaborated since the early days. Likening HIVOS’s partnership with IICD to ‘a successful marriage with a ‘win-win’ sign above the front-door’, Manuela Monteiro, went on to stress that the strength of this partnership not only lay in their joint activities in the South, but also in their collaborative ventures in the North, such as organising the annual Fill-the-Gap event.

This was echoed by Jac Stienen in his closing speech in which he stated that, in his opinion, every type of partnership was a ‘win-win’ situation.

Ms Monteiro went on to describe the power of ICT to create an enabling environment that can give civil society a voice and mobilise it to put pressure on decision-makers to be transparent. In this way, the most important strength of ICT for development (ICT4D) lies in its ability to open up new horizons for people: in short, to facilitate democratisation and empowerment.    

Inspired by a recent field trip to Zambia, Ms Caroline Figuères, newly appointed Managing Director of IICD, used the Chawama Youth Project and Skills Training Centre to show how ICTs are being used by IICD to provide young people in developing countries with much needed skills with a view to improving their employment opportunities. In a moving tribute to some of the young people who use the Training Centre in Chawama, Ms Figuères described how a group of young men were using the centre to produce their own music. Music that was both warm and sad as it allowed them to express their hopes and dreams for the future as well as describe the difficult conditions in which they and their families are living.  Some of these songs had been burned on a CD which Ms Figuères presented to Jac Stienen as a symbol of the concrete results that had been achieved under his leadership: in this way, he and his family would be able to continue enjoying the fruits of IICD’s work during his retirement.   

This was a fitting tribute to Mr Stienen, who emphasized in his closing speech that

“IICD always tries to find out how people can improve their own situation by using their own knowledge and initiatives”.