Sameer Vasta's blog

I'm back from Istanbul today, looking back at some of the important events and messages that came out of the 2009 Annual Meetings. Before we all left Istanbul, however, Alison caught up with World Bank Managing Director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and asked her to provide a short recap of the Meetings.

The 2009 Annual Meetings are wrapping up. Before packing up here in Istanbul, I caught up with Marwan Muasher,  World Bank Senior Vice President for External Affairs, and asked him to provide me with his own one-minute recap of the Meetings.

The 2009 Annual Meetings are wrapping up. Before packing up here in Istanbul, I caught up with Edith Grace Ssempala,  World Bank Director for the Civil Society Program, and asked her to provide me with her own one-minute recap of the Meetings.

This past Sunday, at an event co-hosted by the Hüsnü M. Özyegin Foundation, global business leaders came together to discuss the impacts of the ongoing economic crisis on women. The event culminated in the announcement of several new partnerships to support women around the world.

Highlights of the new partnerships and initiatives announced at the event include:

• The Özyegin Foundation and Goldman Sachs will expand the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women program to Turkey.
• Boeing announced Forum member efforts to track and spend $2 billion over the next three years on goods and services from women-owned businesses in supply chains.
• Belcorp announced a partnership with the World Bank to train 50,000 women in financial literacy in Latin America.
• McKinsey presented their new research, “The Business of Empowering Women,” which maps out potential business sector contributions across women’s life cycles.

This year's World Bank World Development Report focuses on climate change and its effects on international development. The report emphasizes that developing countries are the most vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change, and that a “climate-smart” world is possible if we act now, act together, and act differently.

Yesterday at the Annual Meetings in Istanbul, climate change experts addressed some of the issues from the World Development Report. World Bank Chief Economist Justin Lin, Norwegian State Secretary for International Development H.E. Hakon Gulbrandsen, and WDR Co-Director Marianne Fay spoke about the impact of the changing climate, re-iterating that developing countries will face 75 to 80 percent of the potential damage from global climate change.

To find out more, watch the full webcast of the press conference, or visit the WDR 2010 website. To learn more about the World Bank's work on the topic, visit the new Climate Change beta site or the climate change blog, Development in a Changing Climate.

The World Bank Financial Crisis page now features an interactive financial crisis timeline that lets you see major events that have occurred during the crisis, as well Bank stories, reports, videos and photos that are related to the crisis.

Also on the Financial Crisis page: videos from World Bank experts on the crisis, feature stories about the impact of the crisis, and a brief overview of the financial crisis and the Bank's work.

This morning I had the chance to chat with Sam Worthington, the President and CEO of InterAction, who is attending the Civil Society Forum here in Istanbul. Sam took some time between the sessions of the CSO Forum to tell me a little about InterAction, the work that they are doing with the World Bank, and what he hopes to come out of the Annual Meetings in Turkey this year.

You can watch the entire 5-minute chat below:

The World Bank announced earlier this year that it would back Mexico’s fight against Influenza A (H1N1) with $205 million in fast-disbursing funds. Since then it has supported more than a dozen countries in Latin America in their efforts to control the effects of the virus.

Latin America’s experience with the H1N1 virus in the last six months has revealed that early, aggressive and honest communication with the public and a strong public health surveillance system are critical in mounting an effective response to the virus.

Keith Hansen, World Bank Health Expert for Latin America and the Caribbean, recently spoke about the Bank's work in the region:

"Epidemics can be very costly for the economy, for business, and this is why it’s worth investing a great deal to strengthen and maintain good surveillance and public health control measures. Also, the economy is not the measure of all things. The fundamental issue is that people’s lives, health, productivity and happiness are all at stake. Epidemics aren’t entirely preventable but they can be minimized, and that’s the role of a good public health system, and partners, such as the Bank, can support this."

In the upcoming week, Keith Hansen will post a few videoblog entries here on the Meetings Center, explaining more about the virus, the Bank's work, and some of the issues being discussed at the Meetings.

If you have any questions for Keith Hansen, you can ask him directly at our Speak Out online chat on health systems.

The 2009 Annual Meetings kick off in a few short days in Istanbul, Turkey. A dynamic emerging-market economy strategically located between Europe and Asia, Turkey joined the World Bank in 1947 is the World Bank's largest borrower in the Europe and Central Asia Region.

The Annual Meetings will be held in the newly-built Istanbul Congress Centre, a state-of-the-art conference facility that opened two weeks ago. The Meetings will be the first major event to be hosted at the new facility.

 A bit of Annual Meetings trivia:

• The first Annual Meetings were held on a boat on the Potomac River, with only a few dozen people in attendance. The purpose of the first Meetings was to inform shareholding countries of the Bank's work over the past year and to share the Annual Report.
• The last time the Meetings were held in Istanbul was in 1952, when they were held on a boat on the Bosphorus.
• This year's Meetings will be held at the Istanbul Congress Center, with several thousand people expected to attend. The 2009 Annual Meetings is a multi-faceted event with seminars, speeches, press conferences, as well as G7-8/G24 meetings.
• About 800 representatives from civil society organizations and 700 registered journalists are expected to attend this year's Meetings.