Enzo Martinelli - International Resource Development Manager

Enzo Martinelli has been working for over 20 years for various international development organizations. His areas of expertise include micro-enterprise development, international trade, disability issues and human rights promotion. He spearheaded fair trade in Italy and later established a producer support network in Latin America and East Africa. Since 2003 Enzo has been working as an International Resource Development Manager, in charge of co-ordinating fundraising for international activities of Leonard Cheshire Disability.  Since 2006 Enzo chairs the task group on livelihood of the International Disability and Development Consortium (IDDC) and is now Treasurer of their Board. Since November 2009 Enzo will be Director of Fundraising for PANOS London.

(Please refer to the bottom of the page for useful links related to the field of International Development)

The Accademia asks Enzo Martinelli a few questions:

As an expert Economist would you say that the present world economic crisis could have been avoided in time?

The prevalent laissez-faire promoted by leading world economies for the last 20 years has dramatically failed the test. Financial deregulation created the build-up of huge risky positions whose unwinding has pushed the global economy into a deep recession crisis that only after one years starts showing some minor signs of recovery. The tough lesson that hopefully has been learned will push global decision-makers towards more cooperative and regulated financial and monetary systems that would cope better with the higher levels of interdependence of current world economy.

Trhroughout your career you have devised fund-raising strategies, in an effort to fight world poverty and help people that are at a social disadvantage. In recent months governments from the most industrialised countries have heavily subsidised banks with over a trillion dollars – taxpayers’ hard-earned cash. If governments could get together to help fat cats back on their feet, why not do the same to make world poverty a thing of the past?  

Since 2005 here in the UK a huge success has been gathered around the “Make Poverty History” campaign, which has raised awareness on what individual people could do to contribute to the eradication of world poverty. One of the lines of action of this campaign is geared towards putting pressure on governments, and the UK government in particular, to improve their international aid policies. Surely a lot can be done with simple but effective decisions to increase the volume and the quality of international aid. Even simply ensuring that aid is focused on real people’s needs would dramatically change individual lives taking them out on a path out of poverty.

The war in Iraq is allegedly over, troupes are returning home, interest rates are down, unemployment figures are up and Obama is President of the United States. How does Enzo Martinelli see the future?

I would not be able to do my work without a positive outlook to the future. My professional role requires confidence in a future that will be better than today. Obama is undoubtedly my current hero, as I profoundly admire him. He has had the courage to take many difficult decisions for his country and for the international community and I am sure many more will come. For example he has fundamentally changed attitude of the US towards international human right treaties, signing a recent UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. He still has a long way to go as, for example, the US is the only country other than Somalia that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most widely and rapidly ratified human rights treaty in history. The US is one of only seven countries - together with Iran, Nauru, Palau, Somalia, Sudan and Tonga - that has failed to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Surely Obama wants to put this awful track record right.   

What is the most interesting aspect of your present job?
   
Travelling and meeting people from different cultures is unquestionably one the biggest perks of my job. I recall with excitement an encounter with a cooperative of coffee producers in the South of Mexico. They speak a Mayan language which sounds incredibly exotic to our ears. I was amazed as a keen linguist I could not make up a single word of their conversation and had to wait for the interpretation to catch up. I found astonishing we were able to agree on a way forward with them very quickly as we were speaking the same language of solidarity and mutual respect.

Does 'perfection' exist?

I can recognise perfection in the world around me, and this becomes a source of emotional harmony, but I am never entirely satisfied with what I do. There is a constant tension towards perfection which never resolves. You may call this unresolved perfectionism and it is a constant creative tension.

The most gratifying moment of your career/life?

Thank goodness I have had several times the chance to being rewarded to see that what I was working for was turning into a success. One of these cases was about a project on gender awareness for primary schools in Kenya for which I had been working for some years. To celebrate the achievement of the project the pupils and the teachers in one of the schools put up a little show with all kinds of singing and dancing and a football match with mix-gender teams. It was so obviously inspired and genuine that made me think we had attained to get through with our key message: If you can do it I can do it too.

And the most difficult – how have you overcome it?

The most difficult moment in my life is buried in my intimate past and I had to learn that in very hard times the only person you can really rely upon is yourself.

What is hope?

I have to quote Oscar Wilde with one of his wittiest aphorisms: "This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last."

Your work must have taken you around the globe a few times already but, where, really, is home for you?

I really do not know. I can almost say home is where I am at any point in time as I rarely find myself uncomfortable in a place to want to leave it. There is an instinctive tendency to discover elements of familiarity even in very alien environments. Some years ago I spent a month on a remote atoll in the South Pacific while researching on economic anthropology. The only contact with the external world was a coconut boat coming every week and the overseas programmes of Radio France. That very confined, tropical and unusual space definitely became my family and home. I am still yearning to go back there at some point in time.

Which is your favourite book?

Probably one reading that got stuck in the brain as a teenager was “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” by Richard Bach. It supported the development of my individuality and my choices to live following my instinct, even when this can expose me as an outcast. 

 And film?
 
It has happened that I’ve seen “The Sea Inside” with Javier Bardem several times in different languages and every single time I have been deeply moved. It depicts a very difficult subject with such poetry and tenderness that even if one does not agree with the choices of the main character the viewers have to question their ethical positions.

What is your next dream?

To live by the sea in the tropics. That in itself would make me much happier.
 
What advice do you have for any aspiring young professionals working around the world?

Just follow your aspirations and desires to their fullness, even though these may be looked upon by others as weird and preposterous. You will be proved right in the end.

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Enzo Martinelli suggests the following links for anyone aspiring to a career in his sector:

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