The world is a better place now than it has ever been before. According to the World Health Organization, the average life expectancy at birth of the global population in 2011 was 70 years, as opposed to an estimated 31 years at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Recent historians have tended to focus on the many mistakes more developed nations have made over the past few 100 years as they have spread their culture, diseases, wars, and imperial ambitions to people that probably wished they would have stayed away. Many areas of the world continue to pay the price for these mistakes.

The other side of the story, however, is that more people today enjoy more education, better health, longer life expectancy, and more hope for a better future than at any other time in human history.

ICMA’s Positive Path

ICMA recognized the potential for professional management to contribute to this ongoing improvement more than two decades ago and has been engaged in working in developing countries on projects ranging from physical infrastructure to local government financial management ever since. The decision to focus on positive accomplishments rather than potential negative side effects has helped a number of countries address pressing problems, while creating opportunities for local government professionals around the world.

I was introduced to international development issues through one of my University of Oregon professors who conducted research in the small community I managed, which attracted attention from scholars in Japan. Our community hosted nearly 100 Japanese local government professionals during a four-year period before I was asked to talk at a rural development conference in Chizu, Japan.

I was surprised to learn from this long-term relationship that Japan was dealing with declining rural population just as we were in Oregon, and our strategies to reverse the trend looked remarkably similar. Some of the tourism promotion ideas that surfaced during these years helped Oakridge, Oregon, become one of the nation’s leading mountain bike recreational centers.

The Japanese experience taught me the value of international connections, so I was an eager volunteer when I was asked to participate in an ICMA training mission to Indonesia in 2001. I have since been able to work on ICMA projects in eight other countries around the world, where I have had opportunities to learn and grow that I would never have imagined when I first became a city manager.

Iraq would not seem like fertile ground for local government success stories, and I have struggled over the past decade to maintain a coherent view of the six months I spent in the country in 2003–04. I know our project helped people in specific circumstances, but I can only hope the effort helped lay the foundation for democratic and effective local government.

ICMA’s involvement in Iraq was a small part of a massive effort to help a country recover from the effects of generations of tyranny and move toward becoming a functioning democracy.

While violence persists in a country that has never really been free of it in my lifetime, women now have better access to education; health care is improving; water, wastewater treatment. and electric services are being restored; and infant mortality has declined from more than 62 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2000 to 40.25 in 2012.

A Better Place

I believe the world is a better place today than it was 25 or 50 or 100 years ago, and I know there is convincing empirical evidence to support my opinion. I also know there are countless examples of mistakes and failures occurring every day in aid programs dotted around the world.

I have been privileged, thanks to ICMA, to see examples of the successes and failures over the past 20-plus years and have probably made some contribution to both. There are a limited number of opportunities for ICMA members to get involved in international development work, but I can testify from personal experience that it is both personally and professionally worth the effort. I hope other ICMA members will be similarly inspired.