Batch 4 – Leadership

Leadership played an important role in my internship especially when I was put into an office with direction to research and write up a policy guideline for the Ministry of Information as roadmap. I wanted to be a great ambassador for Arizona State University and displayed the quality of education I had acquired and put it into practice. I demonstrated good practices of hard work, being a good role model, initiating change and most importantly complete the task at hand. Self-management, leadership dynamics in personifying inspiration for other employees, positive corroboration, strengthening innovation amongst staff members, highlighting team work, boosting confidence with co-workers and providing constructive criticism for growth within the ministry.  

Ministry of Information is a newly created ministry to oversee all governmental information. There is a director with four other employees who were overwhelmed with many job responsibilities. It was a win-win situation where I learned from them and they learned from me. It was such an eye opener for me to see that Tonga lacks so much initiatives. There were numerous things that needed improvements and several challenges that required immediate attention and should be addressed.

There were so many leadership skill sets were put to practice while interning such as providing motivation, simplifying an issue and creating logical decisions, offering constructive criticism, organizing and planning as well as creating objectives, spearheading change and initiative on flexible response to demanding situations and revolution of internet influxes in Tonga.

The director of the department portrayed his leadership role by supporting everything that I was recommending. His qualification was on information technology and he was extremely qualified, talented and know everything there was to know about computers, software, hardware, and governmental needs for computer information. He was lack the policy formulation which he actually allowed me to help him with. This provided me an opportunity indeed to freely go about my thorough research and finished writing up a comprehensive report and a 55 pages policy guideline.

Batch 4 – Free Write – My New Neighbor

I have lived in this apartment complex for almost three years with no issues or problems. This month, a new neighbor just moved into the apartment upstairs on top of me. I was away overseas during summer when my neighbor to my right moved in, and the ones on top of them moved in simultaneously.

During the three years that I have lived here, three different people had moved in and had moved out from the upstairs apartment, and I had never had a problem with them. This new neighbor has no respect for others and causing me to look into ways to break my lease. I have made five complaints to management. I have made complaints to the corporate office via telephone and email. And finally something came through this week.

Smoking had never bothered me until now. It is alright for people to smoke but please don’t flick the ashes and cigarette butts downstairs. The upstairs people don’t respect people who live downstairs especially when their cigarettes’ ashes and butts are being dumped right in front of my walkway to my house. I have this beautiful American Indian rug that I bought at the Yavapai/McDowell Reservation and it’s dirty and filthy from their creation.

My lease is up at the end of November and I just can’t wait to move out. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise, it is time for me to leave this apartment and find something closer to downtown Phoenix.

Batch Four - Interview

I had the opportunity to interview Mr. John Pombier who is the deputy city manager of the City of Mesa. As a public policy and public affairs major, one aspires to city management and public administration within the city level and jurisdiction. Although I didn’t intern for this city, however I have always hoped to learn from city governance and its contribution to not only the citizens living in that city but also to the state. The most important thing that I want to learn from a city especially Mesa is the economic development that contributes to employment, healthcare, diversity, religions, improvements to social issues, amongst other things.  

Mr. Pombier currently overlooks facilities maintenance, human resources, solid waste, police, fire, fleet services and the public information for the City of Mesa. According to him these services made up 67% of the City of Mesa’s services. The city manager for Mesa is Chris Brady. Mesa is the 38^th largest city in America with a fast growing population. I have lived in Mesa for almost three years now, and before I am going to move to Phoenix would like to know information pertaining to the city’s public officials, citizen participation, economic resources that finances this city, city’s innovations and the city’s emergency preparedness in terms of natural disasters and terrorist threats.  

John Pombier received his Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Michigan, and his Juris Doctor from the Arizona State University. Previously he was a city prosecutor for the City of Phoenix, deputy general counsel for the State of Arizona’s Governor’s office and former city prosecutor for the City of Mesa from 2003 – 2011 until he was promoted to deputy city manager in 2011, a position he holds to date.

He informed me that his resume is not the typical one for a management position in the city. He doesn’t have a master of public administration degree as most of the city managers have. This was not his career anticipated when he started his career long time ago. His advised was that people with passion to work for public services and to help make a change are the true pioneers of public administration. There were many challenges that he was faced with as a city manager such as lack of quality control by public officials and in adequate economic resources. He had overcame these challenges by hiring the best employees for the city, empowered the staff to step up and make decisions with due diligence, there are more citizen involvements now, there is reserve provisions and the great innovations for the city.

His contributions to the city included but not limited to team up resources and innovation to modify the best possible choices in favor of sustainability, quality of life versus quality of money, improved productivity, improved services and improved crisis response. He was very optimistic about the future, sustainable methods for improvement on core services, higher level of service for the city, better reserves and overhead and a robust future decisions. In terms of future trends, he is extremely concerns with online reliance of this generation. Everyone seemed to be attached to their handheld devices and that is not so much a good thing. He mentioned that his son is taking online classes from home towards his degree. The negative downfall of this is that his son wouldn’t be able to interact with others outside. He would prefer that the next generation doesn’t rely too much with technology and get out more to interact with other people outside the realms of doing everything online.

One is interested in this type of work because one envisioned a future with becoming a consultant for my country in city governance, city policy formulations, and making a difference to third world country. The wealth of knowledge, training, first-hand information, mentoring that are acquired here in the United States would contribute to improvements, sustainable innovations, climate change preparedness, energy efficiency and overall administration and policy impact for my home country Tonga. 

Career Service write up

At the end of January this year, I was able to secure my position with the Government of Tonga. I had to approach Maryjo Zunk to secure this deal after securing Tonga first. It took some convincing at first but the deal was sealed when the career manager approved my internship to be done at a foreign country. The good thing that surfaced out of this internship was that Tonga secured a five years internship program with the College of Public Affairs and Community Solution.

There were required documents such as resume, job description for Tonga, and skills and knowledge from classroom-learning to apply in the real world. The internship would be done during summer overseas, and the actual internship class will be registered for fall 2015. Maryjo helped me out with getting approval from the dean’s office on my internship in Tonga. There wasn’t much to discuss because she had no idea of what Tonga had to offer me. I must say I was happy that I was part of securing my own internship with Tonga and having Maryjo to convince ASU to allow me the opportunity. The best part of this career service was that Maryjo literally re-wrote my entire resume for me.

I visited Ashley Gale today at the WP Carey School of Business in Tempe to get second opinion with my career choice and where I will be heading. I had been accepted to the Master of Public Administration program here at ASU. I will be graduating December 15, and seeking help with Ashley today was very helpful. I wanted her to help me plan out my master’s program as we did at first with my under graduate. It was worth the talk and the one hour because not only she was encouraging me to push forth with the education plan that I had already designed prior to our meeting, but also to continue my education towards the PhD program.   

My own pictures on CEDAW

As I was writing my article on CEDAW, I couldn't find my own pictures that I took while I was in Tonga. With the difficulty in finding my own pictures, I had to use the pictures made available to me from www.matangitonga.to webpage.

I finally stumbled across the pictures that I thought I no longer had. So here are the pictures that I took from the fourth floor where I was interning during the march on CEDAW in Tonga as mentioned on my Free Write 3: CEDAW.

Batch 3 – Free Write 3: CEDAW – The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women

During my internship in Tonga over summer, one came across for the very first time the United Nation’s treaty on the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). One morning as I was driving to work there were so many people scattering around the capital city. I wondered as to why there were so many people downtown this early morning. It was also so difficult with the early traffic rush plus these many people who walked the streets as I was maneuvering safely to get to the office. As soon as I got into the office, I asked around as to why there were so many people in downtown Nuku’alofa. I was informed that most of the people of Tonga are marching to the Royal Palace to petition Tonga signing the treaty of CEDAW. I had to Google on my phone what CEDAW was. This was my first encounter of this foreign treaty.

There were thousands and thousands of people marching the main street with their banners to include, church leaders, nobles of the realm, and children but the most petitioners were women. At first I was shocked to see that most of the marchers were women. Wasn’t this convention treaty about the elimination of discrimination against women? This was very surprising at first because I just couldn’t believe my eyes, that a treaty to eliminate discrimination against women and here they were the majority petitioning its abolishment.

I was also very shocked to see the numerous banners with their biblical quotations. I was very enticed with the women’s representation during this march and tried to comprehend their meaning behind being against CEDAW. These women representatives must had very good reasons for screaming out loud on the streets. The marchers were singing Free Wesleyan Church’s hymns throughout the entire marching. I found this to be extremely muddling that religious fundamentals were part of their escapade. I decided right there and then that I would be researching more on CEDAW in order to have a clear understanding of this United Nation’s treaty.

Tonga was represented by a few selected officials in the United Nations meeting in New York in April 2015 where they pledged that Tonga would rectified and signed the treaty of CEDAW. Tonga agreed in principle and this triggered the disappointments and uproar of the people that they were marching on the streets to their king to abolish this treaty. The King sided with the people and rejected CEDAW.

Tonga is one of the countries in the world that treated women higher than men because of its culture and their ways of life. Women are treated with highest dignity and honor and had been passed down from generation to generation. Perhaps this is the reason why women of Tonga were marching the streets because it is already in existence in its hierarchical system. This is contradicting because there is inequality with women’s representation in government, in churches and executive decision bodies of government. There is no women representation whatsoever in Privy Council, in Cabinet, in Parliament, in the Judiciary system, in any churches. Wouldn’t this be their opportunity to demand this form of discrimination? 

Reference: all pictures here from www.matangitonga.to

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Batch 3 – Free Write 2: Paradise and its beautiful beaches

Tonga is also known for its beautiful beaches. The wonderful creation of these white sandy beaches, blueish water and the cleanliness make one forget many troubles and stresses of life. Tonga has always been a safe haven for me, and I always look forward to going home to visit one of my favorite beaches and forget about this worldly apprehensions, agonies, worries and anxieties. Although it is a very costly trip to Tonga with long hours of flight and transiting, nevertheless it is so worth it when one gets to Tonga from the moment those tires are screeching on the runway.

This is my serenity and tranquility haven as soon as I get to Tonga. No time to waste, but to kiss loved ones, eat tropical home cooking food and hit the beach. This is Tafa’aki Sia Beach, one of my favorite. The island appearing on the picture is ‘Ovaka Island, another of my favorite.

My childhood friend Salesi owns that little boat, and it is out getaway boat to ‘Ovaka Island. We love fishing, snorkeling, deep diving, and swimming here. It is very isolated and most times deserted. One can walk around naked here though it is against the law of Tonga to do so. At night we would completely ignore rule of the land and shed all our clothes because it feels good to challenge yourself to do something that is illegal. There is no patrol boats near and we are extremely far away from civilization.

The Houmale’ia Beach is definitely a spot not to miss when one is in Tonga. The calmness, peacefulness and coolness of this beach is nothing but heavenly. The only sound one hears is the resonance of the waves and the water crashing on the sand. The tropical sun normally is around 75 degrees which is perfect for spots like this.

A day well spent in Tonga at the beach, but then you can always end your day at the beach even at night. One gets to sit and look over the horizon and look out at the sunset. Then you can also do your own bonfire which is legal in Tonga as well. Nothing will beat beachfire at night.