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xvKEYNOTE ADDRESSSombath SomphoneDirector of Participatory Development Training Center (PADETC), Vientiane, Laos;The 2005 Ramon Magsaysay awardee for the Community LeadershipIt is a real honor and pleasure for me to be hereaddressing all of you – the leaders, thinkers, andeducators of the region. I am really overwhelmed bythe fact that the organizers want me to give thekeynote address, as I think there are many morefamous, wise and experienced people in this workshopwho could do this much better than I. Anyway, let mejust throw out a few thoughts as points for discussionto be taken up at later sessions as we ponder over suchimportant issues as the Globalization of Culture andits Implications for Asian Regional Transformation.If we look back over the last 2-3 decades, we mustacknowledge that there has been amazing advances intechnological and industrial development, and withglobalization, many of such advances have spread evento many parts of the less developed world. In generalmore people are living longer and enjoying moreaffluent life styles. Unprecedented advances have beenmade in agriculture and aquaculture, yet more peoplego to bed hungry each day. Many nations have becomevery powerful, but the world has become ever moreinsecure.Now with 7 billion habitants, we begin to beconcerned if we are overshooting the carrying capacityof the earth. The urban population has now overtakenthat of the rural. The gaps between the have and havenotcontinue to widen. Climate change resulting fromindustrial pollution is threatening the life-supportsystem of planet earth. Everyone wants to make moremoney, and everything is monetized.The bulk of the growth and progress comes fromexploiting and extracting our finite resources fromnature. With addiction to growth comes addiction toconsume, and addiction to consumption has led manycountries - as we now see happening in Europe and theUS - into debt and financial instability. Now thecenter of growth has shifted to Asia, or the East, withChina taking the lead, but the fundamental model ofdevelopment has remained basically the same. Nowwe must ask, can the Asian nations follow suchunsustainable patterns of development based oneconomic growth as originated in the West?It seems to me that the shift of center of growth fromthe West to Asia presents both a great challenge as wellas an opportunity for us to re-examine the modelof development and growth and to do somethingright and sustainable. Many of us have, over the pastdecades, pioneered alternative and more sustainablemodels of sustainable livelihoods and development.But many of such models are generally small, isolatedand quickly overwhelmed by major interest groups andcorporations, many of whom control our politiciansand influence development policies. To overcome suchstranglehold, we should make more effort to link theinnovative elements of our research and practicalexperiments of alternative development better andweave these into a fabric of sustainable livelihoods anddevelopment. We need to collaborate with your peersand associates and break away from the traditionalindividualized and compartmentalized modes ofconducting our lives.A conceptual framework of a more balanceddevelopment model:I would like now to share with you a conceptualframework of a more balanced development modelwhich I have used to guide all aspects of my work ineducation and development over the past 20 years, andwhich I have and many of my colleagues have foundquite useful. After years of working on variouseducational and development approaches, I have cometo the conclusion that education and developmentneed to go hand-in-hand and need to be moreintegrated and holistic. Unfortunately, we often leaveeducation to schools and specialized institutionsand then development-to-development planners/specialists and then wonder why people coming out ofeducational institutions seldom link what they learnwith what they do in life. Hence, as educators anddevelopment practitioners we should be stressing theinter-connectedness between four areas of educationThe Work of the 2010/2011 API Fellows