Foreign Policy Need Not Be "Foreign":

Every year the Foreign Policy Association identifies the areas of the world that need our attention and prepares information to help us understand and discuss these issues. The association has prepared materials on the following for 2020:

• Climate change
• India and Pakistan conflict
• Red Sea security
• Modern slavery and human trafficking 
• U.S. relations with the Northern Triangle of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador)
• China's Road to Latin America
• U.S. relations with the Philippines
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data

To find out how to obtain these materials and how to start a foreign policy discussion group, go to fpa.org/great_decisions.

Santa Opens Arctic Ocean for Business

Reindeer have new competition. Between now and next March, ice thickens in the Arctic Ocean, but, because of climate change, gradual melting after March opens a shipping channel in August. Ships with stronger hulls and expensive icebreaker escorts even can use the route for up to three months.

     Up until about five years ago, the dark cold South Pole was home to penguins, and the far north only housed Eskimos and Russian prisoners in Siberia. Oleg Sentson, the Ukrainian film director on a hunger strike, is still there in a penal colony serving a 20-year sentence for protesting Russia's annexation of Crimea. But Russia's President Putin also now hikes on vacations in Siberia, and Russian ships travel from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg on a Northern Sea Route Putin calls "a matter of national pride."

     Why are countries scrambling for claims to sea routes through the Arctic Ocean and not around Antarctica? Examine the North and South Poles on a globe or map. How many degrees latitude does it take from both poles before you find at least five countries? What potential problems do you see when passing between Russia and Alaska?

     Arctic shipping routes, according to a paper prepared by the engineering faculty at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, are most dangerous in the East Siberian Sea. In the shallowest area of the Arctic Ocean, ice builds up earlier and faster after summer, and uncharted waters are more likely to cause ships to run aground. Even during summer, half of the East Siberian Sea can remain ice covered.

Go North, Young Men

     Despite the harsh environment and high insurance rates, activity is expected to increase in the far north due to a variety of factors. Arctic routes shorten navigation time, and they are free of pirates. Oil and gas reserves in the area already have attracted exploration. (See the earlier posts: "Troubled Northwest Passage Found" and "North Pole Flag.")

     Accidents, seldom now, can be expected to increase as shipping traffic increases, however. Ship captains who ply the Arctic Ocean cannot help but feel a little like captains of potential Titanics. Ice can trap ships, and they still can hit icebergs, as well as icebreaker escorts and other ships. Captains need constant weather station updates about the changing wave heights, wind speeds, and temperatures that affect icing in each section along their routes, information they also need in order to know how long crew members should stay out on deck. They want protocols about plans for emergency assistance and oil spill clean ups from members of the Arctic Council (Russia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark-Greenland, Finland, Iceland, Canada, and the United States).

Tourists Who Have Been Everywhere

     Possible perils failed to deter 900 passengers from paying anywhere from $20,000 to one million dollars per person to book passage on the Crystal Serenity's first cruise through the Arctic Ocean in 2016. The ship sailed from Seward to Nome, Alaska, where it docked to unload solar panels ordered by the city's population of 3800. In groups, cruise passengers took turns sailing to shore in transport boats to photograph wild musk oxen; eat $5 slices of blueberry pie; watch Eskimo dancers; and purchase locally made seal gloves and wallets. From Nome, a month long voyage passed by Greenland and ended in New York.

     The trip required a crew of 600, a special navigation satellite system, and chartering cargo planes to deliver perishable food for pickups at communities along northern Canada. The Crystal Serenity made another, and its final, passenger voyage in 2017.

Faster Cargo Shipments

     After the Crystal Serenity tested the Arctic route for passenger cruises, the Danish-based Maersk line, the world's largest shipping company, launched the Russian Venta Maersk's container ship north from Vladivostok, west across the Arctic Ocean, and south around Norway and Sweden to St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea. Carrying 3600 containers of Russian frozen fish and electronics from South Korea, the ship cut off about two weeks from the usual time it takes to use the southern route from Asia and enter Europe using the Suez Canal. While time was saved, profit was lost, because container ships are used to dropping off and picking up a thousand containers at a dozen or more ports along the way. No such transshipment points exist on the Arctic route. Following the test trip, Maersk announced no immediate plans to substitute the Northern Sea Route for its usual schedule.

     Russian cargo ships already do service domestic ports on an irregular basis. Now Moscow is building roads, a railroad, and facilities to establish regular ports of call along its Northern Sea Route. China also has made overtures to Iceland and Greenland to establish outposts on what Beijing calls its "Polar Silk Road." (See the earlier posts, "Iceland Gives China the Cold Shoulder" and "China Stakes New Claim to Arctic.")

      After China's President Xi Jinping determined to reduce pollution by switching from coal to natural gas, a serious shortage left Chinese homes without heat and shut down factories. To prevent future natural gas shortages, China's state-owned COSCO shipping company and Japan's Mitsui O.S.K. Lines formed a 50-50 partnership to ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) east on the Arctic Ocean and south to Asia from Russia's Novartek producer on the Yamal Peninsula. While a tanker can make this trip in 15 days in summer, compared to 35 days by going west and south through the Suez Canal, ice is too thick in the winter. Yet, there is pressure to increase China's shipments through the most dangerous East Siberian Sea.



 
           

Troubled Northwest Passage Found

Even before the US decided it would be one of only three countries not bound by the goals for green- house gas emissions established in the 2015 Paris climate accord, the planet warmed to open a Northwest Passage through the Arctic Ocean. For example, cruise ships now travel from Alaska to New York without icebreaker assistance.

     Still, there is no guarantee that ships won't be grounded in a storm or that oil, natural gas, and mineral exploration in newly accessible waters won't accidentally endanger whales and migrating birds. Clean up in the cold Arctic where it is dark much of the year is an impossible task. Even without an incident, increased shipping activity introduces the new and unknown impact of underwater noise, dirty water, sewage discharge, and invasive species in the Arctic. With Russia now training military troops in Siberia, there also is a chance of aggression from the far North.

     Sunlight that the Arctic's ice used to reflect now helps quicken sea ice melt, at the rate of 10% per decade, and raises sea levels to threaten inhabitants of islands and coastal cities worldwide. As the disappearance of sea ice forced polar bears onto land, villagers along the Bering Straight needed to form polar bear patrols to protect students walking to school. Residents in the entire Alaskan village of Shishmaret had to relocate when their home began falling into the water. They will not be the only ones faced with the need to move to new homes.

     The reduced difference between temperatures in the Arctic and those in more temperate southern zones causes the fast moving air current, known as the jet stream, to weaken and make extreme weather changes of drought, heat, snow, and floods more likely in North America, Europe, and Asia.

     In 1996, representatives of Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Russia, and the United States formed an Arctic Council for scientific and environmental study of the Arctic. This advisory body has not shown the leadership needed to outline a vision for the Arctic. Instead, the UN's International Maritime Organization stepped up to provide a Polar Code of environmental regulations for polar shipping. And under President Obama, the US on its own initiative prohibited oil and gas drilling in the Chukchi Sea and most of the Beaufort Sea. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has declared a five year moratorium on offshore oil development in Canada's Arctic waters.

     Private companies are developing their own polar vision to generate geothermal steam energy from water heated in pipes by molten magma from Iceland's volcanoes. Buying into the possibilities of an expensive 20-year project to send clean, renewable volcanic energy from the Krafla Magma Testbed through North Atlantic underwater cables to power turbines in the UK, Netherlands, and/or Denmark are Iceland's Landsvirkjun, Norway's Statoil, Canada's Falco Resources, and US-based Sandia National Laboratories. Iceland's residents have received reassurances that drilling in the Krafla site will not trigger a volcanic eruption.

(For an earlier discussion of developments in the Arctic, go to the post, "North Pole Flag.")

   

   

Commodity Crush Careers

Commodity traders keep an eye on prices like the following every day.

Per day prices

____________________________________________________________________ 

Commodities            1/18                1/24               1/31                   2/1                   2/3

____________________________________________________________________

Cotton                     72.3                                                                                        76.3

Corn                                                363.5

Coffee                    149.5                152.2             149.6                                       146.8

Cocoa                     2229                 2202              2091                                        2063

Rough rice               9.94                  9.98              9.54                9.53                   9.51

Soybeans                                                              33.83

Sugar                      20.95                20.55            20.49                                        21.3

_______________________________________________________________________________

But commodity traders are not the only ones whose careers involve commodity prices. Whether we live in Toronto or Timbuktu, trading money for goods and bartering goods for goods are what we do all our lives. On the global level there are careers in shipping agricultural commodities that go into what we eat and the mineral commodities that go into what we use. Crude oil is the most traded commodity in the world and coffee is the second. 

The prices buyers are willing to sign a contract to pay for commodities roll across the bottom of the CNBC station every trading day. You also can find commodity prices on the internet. I like to check them occasionally to see if there is an up trend or down trend, like the above prices show for cocoa, or up and down volatility.

What each quoted price means is complex. The price quoted for coffee beans applies to 37,500 pounds and the price for sugar applies to 112,000 pounds. These are the amounts that fit in one overseas shipping container. Since a ship might carry 18,000 containers, you can figure how much a company would pay for one shipload of a given amount of pounds.

Commodity prices are also important to those who price consumer goods. In the case of coffee beans, there are the additional costs of roasting the beans, repackaging the 250 bags that carry 37,5000 pounds of coffee on ships into the smaller bags or cans a consumer wants, distributing the coffee to thousands of stores, and advertising a brand.

How to increase prices

When a crop is harvested in countries that produce agricultural commodities, such as coffee, farmers will be offered lower prices if a harvest is large and marketed at one time. If a harvest is smaller because of drought or disease or because it is stored and sold gradually, prices will increase. Countries also can increase coffee export revenue, if they develop roasting facilities. Consequently, there are potential careers in water and pest control, storage, and processing. Some of these same subjects are covered in the earlier posts, "I Love Coffee, I Love Tea" and "Become a Discriminating Chocolate Consumer.")

I

Worldwide booms and recessions are a matter of concern to those whose careers in companies and countries depend on demand for the mineral commodities used in industrial production. Politicians in mineral-rich countries are tempted to take out loans in good times that voters will not want to repay with higher taxes in bad economic times. (The earlier post, "Falling Commodity Prices Spur Diversification in Emerging Markets," lists some of the counties affected by demand for certain mineral commodities.)

Commodities offer a vast field of career opportunities now and probably even more in the future as AI, robotics, and sensors are incorporated. For those interested in investing, the site, investopedia.com, covers the basics and more.

   

                                                                                                     

Iceland Gives China the Cold Shoulder

Unlike Russia and the United States, China has no military or commercial presence in the Arctic. To date, Beijing's attempts to remedy the situation have failed. China's hope for a foothold in a European NATO member were dashed, when the Iceland sheep farm Huang Nubo, a former official in the Chinese Communist Party's Propaganda Department, tried to buy was sold to British shale gas fracking billionaire, Jim Ratcliffe, in December, 2016.

(If a student has a globe, this would be a good opportunity to see where a sheep farm in northeastern Iceland would be in relation to the Arctic Circle and to see which other countries are in or near Arctic waters.)

Trading on his relationship with Hjorleifur Sveinbjornsson, his former roommate at Peking University, Huang first visited Iceland in 2010 to establish a China-Iceland Culture Fund to finance meetings of poets. Sveinbjornsson has said Huang was "not an idiot" and did not think Huang's offer to buy the sheep farm for $7 million in 2011 was a front for other than the stated eco-resort purpose.

In 2012 , the state-owned China Development Bank put up $100 million to back Huang's plan to build a luxury hotel and golf course in Grimsstadir, Iceland. In the 100 square mile sheep farm, where snow falls from September to May, Huang claimed that what he called his 100-room, high end, environmentally friendly resort was designed for wealthy Chinese tourists looking for clean air, peace, and quiet.

Since Huang's Zhongkun Group chose a location near oil reserves where China bid for a drilling license on Iceland's northeast coast and also planned to upgrade a landing strip to handle 10 aircraft, a suspicious interior minister rejected a request to exempt Huang from Iceland't laws restricting foreign land ownership. Huang countered with a proposal for a long-term lease arrangement which also was not approved.

 Ratcliffe will own two thirds of the Grimsstadir property; the Icelandic government and other minority investors will own the rest. Ratcliffe says his interest in Iceland is conservation, particularly for protecting area rivers that are important breeding grounds for Atlantic salmon. The Strengur angling club that leases rivers in Grimsstadir expressed pleasure having Ratcliffe as a partner they know as an avid salmon angler who has fished the area for years.

Beijing has made multiple approaches to Iceland. From its vantage point in the South China Sea, China is used to presiding over 30% of the world's ocean-going trade. Looking ahead to the prospect of climate change permitting more traffic through warming Arctic waters, China has expressed an interest in using Iceland as a shipping hub. China's embassy building in Reykjavik is the city's largest. The two countries negotiated a Free Trade Area accord. And, in an attempt to become an observer, China sent its Snow Dragon icebreaker for a stop at Iceland during an Arctic Council meeting of eight nations (Russia, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Canada, and the United States).

As opposed to China, Russia's oil and gas drilling prospects in the Arctic could improve. Rex Tillerson, currently Exxon Mobil's CEO and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's choice for Secretary of State, has close ties with Russia.

Want An Exciting Career?

Students who will begin their careers in the next five to 20 years will be working to about 2060 to 2075 or longer. They can worry about being unemployed by robots or discover Africa.

     Of course, Africa already has been discovered as an exotic home of wild animals, gold, diamonds, rubber, slaves, and the origin of mankind. Because of the scramble for colonies, English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch are spoken there along with local languages. Currently, with advances in mobile communication; transportation, including by drones; and medicine, Africa is on track to come into its own normalcy. The middle class is growing. And the size of the continent suggests regional divisions into northern, western, southern, northeastern, and southeastern markets. A recent acquisition recognized the opportunity to finance trade in Africa. Helios Investment Partners, the private equity investment firm founded and managed by Africans, Tope Lawani and Babatunde Soyoye, in 2004, acquired the UK's Crown Agents Bank and Crown Agents Investment Management in April, 2016.

     What might be most attractive to the world's future tech-savvy, well-educated, independent workforce is the challenge Africa presents. The enticing work environment Sydney Finkelstein describes in his new book, Superbosses, is one where creative energy is purpose-focused on a vision, commitment to a task is satisfying, and talent is recognized and rewarded at an early age.

     Some international bankers already are enjoying unique opportunities to figure out how to handle complicated financial deals in Africa. Lending for African projects from Asia's investors, Japan, China, and India, for example, is secured by assets, such as the turbines Japan provided for a coal-fired power plant in Morocco, and repaid from revenue that the projects, such as the power plant, will generate. Similarly, when a loan for buses will be repaid by future bus fares, bankers have to know what questions to ask. Which government agency has authority to make the purchase? Will the buses be able to handle African road and climate conditions? Who will train drivers and maintenance workers? Is payment to be made in local or hard currency? Is there a way to hedge against the devaluation of local currency, and what are the options should emergency measures prevent hard currency from leaving the country?

     Gaurav Wahi of India's Jindal Steel and Power Limited, a company with operations in South Africa and Mozambique, called attention to a May 16, 2016 Forbes article that provided excellent practical advice about doing business in Africa. Companies looking for immediate, low-risk African opportunities have limited options in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, and Swaziland. Half of China's $12 billion investment in Africa between 2005 and 2015, for example, went to South Africa. Few African countries currently have relatively high per capita GDP incomes and reliable infrastructure (ports, roads) and institutions (legal, police, and educational systems).

     Elsewhere in Africa, companies that can become "early pan-African powerhouses" need patience and moxie to do the following:

• Identify home office talent with the ability to live in a foreign environment, to accommodate company policies and processes to local cultures, and to connect with local employees.
• Manage relations with governments (secure agreements and contracts)
• Deal with a lack of government regulations and poor land ownership records
• Develop self-sufficiency that might require vertical integration from raw material sourcing to production and distribution
• Provide low-cost products and services
• Expand uses for mobile phones (prepaid bank accounts, marketing, customer service)
• Train employees and provide benefit retention packages that prevent poaching by competitors
• Establish firm guidelines (ethical reputation requirements, experience working with other foreign companies) for evaluating potential local partnerships
• Provide security
• Form contingency plans for insurrections and political instability
• Anticipate economic volatility from commodity price swings
• Gain guarantees from multilateral organizations, such as the World Bank 

     No one doing business in Africa will be stuck implementing a bureaucratic playbook. Marketers will be reading the accounts of explorers and missionaries to identify routes to their target markets along rivers and in desert oases. Freight forwarders will fill their Rolodexes with importers and exporters, if they know which carriers can be counted on to meet delivery schedules and if they know how to fill shipping containers to get the best cargo rates. Manufacturers will prosper when they attract the best employees, because they have a reputation for providing excellent training programs and benefits.

     Just considering a normal bell curve distribution of talent, not only business, but African agriculture, sports, education, security, law, fashion, and the arts are all fields ripe for development in the coming years. An exciting career awaits those willing and able to work together with Africans.

(Also see the later post, "There's No Business Like Bug Business.")

Slow Economic Growth's Impact on Global Shipping

Low anticipated growth in North American and European markets from 2016 to 2018 means Asian traffic to the US and Europe will not expand, And although growth in 2016's shipping capacity is expected to be half of what it was in 2015, freight rates for cargo traveling on the high seas will drop or, at best, hold steady.

    By the end of 2018, 17 carriers are expected to transport 32% of all tonnage (measured by teu capacity, i.e. the number of 20-foot long, 8-feet tall and wide shipping containers that a ship can carry) on their ultra large container ships. Smaller capacity ships will be hard pressed to stay in business.

     At the same time the amount of tonnage being shipped is unlikely to increase, the capacity the Panama Canal can handle will double in 2016, when the current expansion project is expected to be completed. The enlarged canal will permit passage of more ships and the larger New Panamax ships that can carry twice as much cargo as current Panamax models.

(Additional information about cargo shipping is available on the earlier post, "What Do You Want to Be?)

What Do You Want to Be?

What are you going to be? When the contestants on "Kids Jeopardy" were asked about their career plans, none of the 10-to-12-year-olds said they wanted to work as freight forwarders, to teach English overseas, to manage the first Macy's store in Abu Dhabi, or to cover Iranian elections as a foreign correspondent. Yet, today's wise students need to think globally about their future careers. In fact, a poll conducted by John Zogby (zogbyanalytics.com) in late May, 2014, found that half of the 18-34- year-old smart phone owners expect to live and work in a foreign country at some point in their lives. Nader Luthera has launched coworktheworld.com/apply-now, which is a way to join a group that works anywhere in the world using a laptop and mobile phone.

     There are opportunities offered by professions, such as photographer (See the later blog post, "Take Your Best Shot,") that do not need foreign language translations. Opportunities involving sensors, for example, are worth exploring, since sensors already are being added to clothing to monitor a person's vital signs, and they are being used in fields to monitor a crop's need for irrigation. Nonetheless, youngsters who speak a foreign language, because they grew up with military, diplomatic, executive, and missionary parents stationed outside the United States, have an ear for foreign languages, or spent part of their academic careers in foreign countries, have additional options in what often are invisible international careers.

     It is, for example, a rare child who has been exposed to the physical distribution aspect of international trade, and, for that matter, the business of dismantling and recycling military, outmoded single-hull tankers, cruise, and other ships. And yet, working as a temp for the Matson Line in Hawaii, I found tracking containers and watching giant winches load and unload the 7,500 containers a ship could carry in those days a fascinating field of career opportunities that young people should explore. As a result of the shale oil boom in the U.S., consider how shipping sales reps need to meet the challenge of finding new customers in India and China and how transport experts need to  redirect to these new ports the tankers that used to carry crude oil from West Africa and Latin America to the U.S.

      Ups and downs in the world economy also provide careers for nimble managers. Soren Skou, chief executive of Maersk, the world's largest container shipping line, reports his industry needed to place a new focus on profit by cost cutting not gaining greater market share. Why? The world's weak economy caused projected annual growth to fall from a high of close to 10% before 2008 to 4% to 5% afterwards. Maersk's cost cutting involved making ships travel slower and scrapping older vessels to take delivery of 20 of the world's largest ships, known as Triple Es, that can carry 10% more volume.  (Maersk has denied charges of bribing a Brazilian official of state-owned Petrobras in order to gain tanker contracts.)

      Supply chain management from raw material to retailer includes job opportunities in the entire process of furnishing information; marketing; moving goods; and providing insurance, security, and other services. Consider all that is involved in the seamless transfer of goods from ship or plane to train to truck. China's COFCO Limited provides an example of a fully integrated supply chain. Through equity participation, controlling interest, alliances, and joint ventures, COFCO employs workers with 70 different nationalities in 140 locations. A new Supply and Value Chain Center at the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University in Chicago is among the schools that have recognized the need to train students in the inter-related fields of transportation, distribution, and logistics. Since e-commerce marketers are finding they have to pay more attention to the process of shipping and delivering the goods customers purchase online, there new opportunities for experts in supply chain logistics throughout the world. (See the later blog post, "Problems Present Career Opportunities.")

    What if you were involved in moving cocoa beans from Ghana, Africa, to Hershey, PA, and chocolate bars on to grocery stores everywhere in the world? Maintaining a bare bones inventory would reduce costs, but a tsunami, longshoremen's strike, or any other disruption in the supply chain could wipe out the savings advantage of a just-in-time inventory. Since 95% of the world's export-import trade is carried by ships, the cost savings of using this slow mode of transportation is uncertain. Nonetheless, the Panama Canal is now being enlarged to handle the bulk of the world's ships that carry 13,000 containers. No canal can accommodate the even larger Capesize Triple E ships with a teu* capacity to carry 18,000, 20-foot containers.  How will shipping companies fill this new capacity? Young people need to explore career opportunities that involve understanding and deciding whether or not to rely on distant suppliers or move manufacturing closer to consumers.

         The logistics of moving goods and people throughout the world offers career prospects in other fields, such as livestock exports (See the blog post, "Dairy Cows on the Moove,") and the military. Gen. Colin Powell may not be available to speak about opportunities for the soldier-diplomat, but teachers and parents who organize Career Days need to seek out others who have served in the military.

     Then, there also is the need to expose young people to the experiences of those who joined the Peace Corps, invested in foreign currency (Go to my earlier blog post, "When to Buy/Sell in the World Market"), worked for international agencies (Check the directories for development organizations at devdir.org), handled intellectural property disputes in China, opened a Gap store in Kuwait (Go to my blog post, "The World of Fashion," for other career opportunities in the fashion field), or found a career in sports (Go to my blog post, "Wide World of Sports").

     Students need information about the competitive exams the State Department holds for college graduates who want to become Foreign Service officers like those who helped broker the Dayton Accords that ended ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. Whether or not there is a Cold War or a war on terrorism, national security depends on those, especially those with foreign language skills, who choose a military career or positions at agencies such as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Treasury's Office of Terrorism and Finance Intelligence, or Energy's Office of Intelligence. Also, be on the lookout for opportunities in a new Technology Corps, proposed by John Zogby, pollster and co-author of The First Globals: Understanding, Managing, and Unleashing Our First Millennial Generation.

     If international economic issues interest a student, there are employment opportunities at the Agency for International Development, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, multinational companies, and firms that invest in emerging markets. Students also might consider applying for positions as UN translators and interpreters or for the limited staff openings in specialized UN agencies, such as the World Health Organization or the World Meteorological Organization.

     To find information about international employment opportunities, students should see if their libraries carry the global jobs kit published by Impact Publications in Virginia. Books in the series cover internships, graduate programs, qualifications employers expect, and application procedures. Careers in International Affairs, an Impact publication, is worth purchasing. Another source of information about international job openings and internships is the Foreign Policy Association's website, fpa.org. At FPAU.ORG, the Foreign Policy Association lists career development training sessions offered for those who want to land a position in the international field. It is a good idea for students to join LinkedIn (linkedin.com), since linkedin.com/edu has a variety of ways to help them find the schools that offer courses in line with career objectives and the top employers of other alums who have majored in given fields. For example, a survey published by linkedin.com/edu/alumni found the U.S. Department of State, various branches of the military, the United Nations, Deloitte consulting, IBM, and The World Bank were among the main employers of those who had majored in international relations and foreign affairs.

     And, again, there are the directories for development organizations listed at devdir.org. Patrick Shields, the Executive Director and CFO of Global Recruitment Specialists, recommends using these directories to look for international organizations that need people who can do what you already have experience doing.

*Teu capacity measures the number of 20-foot long, 8-feet tall and wide shipping containers that a ship can carry.