2.1 The Challenges of our Time

Rethinking Development Podcast

Robert David Cohen is an award-winning poet, journalist, children’s rights expert and communications strategist. He is the director and co-founder of Rain Barrel Communications, a global consulting firm based in NYC. Rain Barrel gives strategic and tactical communications support and counsel to UN agencies and other international organizations, NGOs, governments, businesses and universities. Prior to founding Rain Barrel, Robert was a communication specialist for UNICEF. He worked in dozens of countries to facilitate dialogue, create partnerships, foster trust and find common ground among diverse stakeholders for a broad array of advocacy causes, many of them centered on the rights and well-being of children. He served as chief speechwriter to two successive Executive Directors, helping to articulate the mission of the organization on issues ranging from preventable child and maternal deaths and hunger to HIV/AIDS and child soldiers. Robert speaks to us about working as a journalist and editor in Latin America, working as a speech writer for Jim Grant, the power of language, the negotiations that took place behind the ratification of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, communication for development and unintentional harm, the existential challenge that is climate change, unjust economic and political models, multilateralism, new models of cooperation, the COVID-19 pandemic and much more. He joins us from New York City, USA.

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