From Memory to Practice: An Evening with Semere and Renewing the Promise

From Memory to Practice: An Evening with Semere and Renewing the Promise

On June 23, 2026, we gathered in Washington, DC to celebrate the launch of Renewing the Promise. Among the voices that evening was Blake Kent, a longtime colleague and friend, who offered not a conventional book review but a deeply personal meditation on mentorship, community, and the difficult work of rebuilding public life. Drawing on two decades of shared experience—from Iraq to Eritrea to small-town Texas—Blake locates the book’s central question: How does a community renew its promise when trust has been damaged and the future has begun to feel like something that must be found elsewhere? We are honored to share his full remarks—audio and transcript—here.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cT08C88hxLNf905n0lMzlg8bfEAqTW3l/view?usp=sharing_eil_se_dm&ts=6a417c3c

First, I want to thank Jerrold and Semere. 

Jerrold and Semere, I have had the opportunity to work with for, gosh, the last 20 years off and on, and mainly just getting to observe and listen to them in various capacities and watch them work, and learn from them. So, I consider them both amazing mentors, and I'm just blessed to know you both, and I'm really fortunate to have met you today, Eduardo, and it's been a real pleasure getting to know you this afternoon.

Thanks to the Flor and Carola for letting us come here. I love their setting and what they're working to do here.

I come to this topic with a lot of respect and humility.  Driving here the other day to check out what the layout was, I talked a lot with Semere about some of our past places that we've worked and just how fortunate we've both been to work in and to see so many places in the world and to not just be tourists, but to get to work, and get to know communities and the struggles that they face, and get to struggle alongside them. We talked a lot about Iraq, and going back to those places after I was there as a soldier and he was working there in education development, for Creative, actually, too. So, it's both humbling and heartbreaking and to see where different places are after we've had the chance to be there. And Semere, as you've heard, I mean, he is coming from lived experience. He's been a part of Eritrea's struggles for a long, long time now going back to even as a freedom fighter, and as a former soldier, I feel the same way in how we look at our own country and in what do we aspire for in our own country as well. He's worked in service, he's dealt with displacement, and he's had decades of work in development across many countries in community.

And Semere's book isn't just some analysis from a distance alone. It reflects someone who has carried the promise of this country, their struggle, disappointment, and continued to hope.

What struck me most about Renewing the Promise is that it's not just satisfied with some diagnosis of the issues, but it names the crisis. It names the failures. It names the costs of what has been broken, the institutions under development, repression, mistrust, and loss to opportunity. But it's not a book of despair. Semere asks instead, what comes next, what comes after?

I think of this in context of—there is an Iroquois idea of seven generations and that you look forward to seven generations ahead and you make decisions based on how it’s going to affect seven generations ahead. And I see things in that same way. What comes next isn't just about who we are and what's happening right now, but what's going to be the future? And what's going to be the future for the generations today?

So, what does it take not only to change a system, but to rebuild a public life? What does it take for citizens, leaders, institutions, diaspora, communities, and international partners to participate in renewal without repeating the patterns that helped create the crisis?

I'm certainly not an Eritrean historian, and honestly, as a small-town Texas boy, I've been fortunate enough to have both of Semere's books to learn from, but also just long conversations and being able to ask questions, and blessed to have the knowledge shared with me from it. My background, I've been fortunate enough to travel a little bit, and most importantly, listen to a lot of different people in a lot of communities, and that's what I'm bringing here with this.

The question I hear underneath Semere's book is this. How does a community renew its promise when trust has been damaged, opportunity has narrowed, and the future has begun to feel like people must leave home to find something else, something better. The question belongs to Eritrea, but it also belongs to us as well. That question travels far beyond those little borders.

One of useful things Semere does is separate the economic growth from human development. So, as Eduardo was talking about all the metrics of growth, that we can talk about  growth, tells us something important.  That can tell us whether output expands, whether trade increases, whether investment rises, whether infrastructure is being built, whether a national economy is becoming more productive. But growth by itself does not tell us whether people are safer, healthier, better educated, more rooted, more capable, or more helpful. A country can have a natural resource and still have poverty.

You (Semere) gave the example of an oil rich country that still have, face, a lot of poverty.

A city can have cranes in the skyline and still have families who cannot afford to stay.  A neighborhood can attract investment and still lose the people, memory, and culture that made it worth investing in. So, the question is not, did the economy grow? The deeper question is what kind of life did that growth make possible, and for who?

That's where Semere's emphasis on human welfare matters. Development is whether families can earn a living, educate their children, speak without fear, and see a future home. And that's a much more demanding standard than growth alone. It means the economy is not the final measure of a society. It is one of the tools by which people become more capable. Communities become more stable, and the country becomes more fully itself.

Then it is also not nostalgia.  It's not pretending the past was simple. It's not merely replacing one set of leaders with another.

Renewal is disciplined work of rebuilding the conditions under which people can live with dignity and act with agency.

Too often development is measured in ways that miss the daily realities of human life. We ask whether a nation is growing, but not whether families can remain intact. We ask whether investment is increasing, but not whether young people can imagine a future at home. We ask whether institutions exist on paper, but not whether ordinary people experience them as fair, predictable, and accountable.

Semere's book pushes us a more demanding standard. It asks us to look at development, not only as a technical project, but as a human one. That's the difference between growth as a statistic, and renewal as a lived reality.

And this is where the civic and economic parts of Semere's argument become inseparable. We often talk about the economy and democracy as if they sit in separate rooms. One room talks about markets and jobs and investment and infrastructure and trade, business formation and productivity. And the other talks about rights and institutions, participation, law, belonging, accountability, and public trust. In practice, it's the same house.

People start businesses where they believe the rules will not change arbitrarily. They invest where contracts can be trusted, and they return home where they believe their skills will matter. They educate their children, where they believe effort has a future.

So, I'd say trust is not soft value. Trust is economic infrastructure. When trust collapses, economic life narrows, people hold back. They protect themselves. They move capital, talent, and imagination somewhere else. They stop believing that contribution will be rewarded fairly.

And when that happens, a country does not only lose money. It loses possibility. So, if we care about development. We have to care about the civic conditions that make development possible.

That means accountable institutions are not a side issue. Public participation is not a luxury, and rule of law is not abstract ideal. Education is not simply workforce preparation. These are part of the foundation on which economic, economic life depends.

This is always, also, why community cannot be treated as an afterthought.

In a lot of development conversations, community is treated as a beneficiary. A group to receive services, attend meetings, validate a plan, or absorb an intervention.

But, Semere pushes toward a different idea. People have to be authors of their own development.

And authentic participation is not a listening session after the decision has already been made. It's not decoration. And it's not a box to check. It’s the practice. It's the practical process by which people identify their priorities, test solutions, hold institutions accountable and share their responsibility for the future.

And this matters economically.

Local ownership is not sentimental. Local ownership is how development becomes more accurate. People closest to the problems often understand the constraints that outside planners miss. They know which relationships matter. They know where trust has been broken. They know what informal systems already exist. They know what skills are present and unused, and they know what young people are leaving to find somewhere else.

Every community already has builders.  They have teachers, entrepreneurs, elders, young people, and people in diaspora who still feel responsible for home. The question is whether a society can organize those assets into something durable.

That's where economic development and community development meet.

Economic renewal without community can become extraction. Community renewal without an economic base can become memory without power. The work is to bind them together. Shared trust, shared capacity, and shared opportunity.

And this is one of the deeper lessons I take from Semere's book. A country cannot only ask, “How do we grow?” It also has to ask what kind of civic life will make growth fair, durable, and worthy of sacrifices the people have made.

I also think Semere's book gives those of us speaking from the United States a reason to be careful and humble. We should not sit here as though our role is to look outward at other societies, and advise them of a place them, advise them from a place of competence or completion. We're also living through our own questions of trust. Belonging, affordability, institutional confidence, civic fragmentation, and economic anxiety.

Our context is different. Our history is different. The scale of our challenges are different, but the underlying questions are not entirely foreign to us. Do people believe institutions are working for them? Do families believe the economy gives them a future? Do communities have places to gather across differences. Do young people believe public life is worth entering? And do citizens feel like participants or spectators? When trust weakens and economic pressure rises, people often retreat and they retreat into private survival. They retreat into political camps, and they retreat into suspicion, exhaustion, and despair. And that can happen anywhere. And when it happens, renew cannot be delivered only from the top, it has to be practiced locally. And this is where the global lesson becomes practical. Every society has to find its own path.

Renewal in Eritrea will not look like renewal in the United States.  Renewal in Washington, DC, will not look like renewal in Asmara. Renewal in one neighborhood, will not look exactly like renewal in another.

But, every community needs places where trust can be rebuilt and practical work can begin. And that may sound modest, but it's not small. It is often beginning of everything else, though. Because before people can build together, they have to be able to gather. Before they can gather meaningfully, they have to be able to listen. And before they can listen, they have to believe that the future is not already closed.

So, Semere’s book is about Eritrea, but it reminds us that renewal is not only a national project, it is also a civic practice. It is how people recover the ability to imagine a future, and a future together.

And that leads to my final point.

Support should not require control. In international development, in philanthropy, in civic work, and even in neighborhood work. There's the temptation to help by taking over. To arrive with a plan already completed. To treat local people as data sources, beneficiaries, or implementation partners rather than as authors.

And sometimes that comes from arrogance. And sometimes it comes from urgency. And sometimes it comes from sincere good intention. But, the effect can still be dependency, distortion, or resentment?

A better model is partnership. With humility, and mutual responsibility. And that does not mean outsiders have nothing to offer. They may bring resources, relationships, professional knowledge, and a bridge between worlds.

And diaspora communities, especially, can hold a powerful role here. They're not simply outside observers. They can carry memory, connection, credibility, and capacity. And they can help open doors.  They can help translate between systems, and they can help support institutions, education, enterprise, and public life.

But those gifts are most useful, when they strengthen local agency, rather than replace it. To support a community well is not to arrive with a finished answer. It's to listen long enough to understand what people are already trying to protect, what they're trying to repair, and what they are ready to build. It is to ask what capacity already exists, and what would unlock it. It's to create conditions where people can decide, organize, produce, educate, govern, and imagine for themselves.

And this is not passive. They require standards, strategy, accountability, and real investment. But it changes the posture. It moves from patronage to partnership. From rescue to relationship. From control to capacity. From speaking for people to building conditions where people can speak and act for themselves.

And that's why I think renewing the promise is not only about national future, it's about civic practice. It asks what it would take for a society to heal without deepening division. To grow without abandoning justice. To partner with the world without surrendering its own agency, and to build an economy that serves the dignity of its people.

For me, the lasting challenge of Semere's book is this. Promise is not renewed by words alone. Promises renewed through trusted institutions, inclusive economies, organized communities, young people who can see a future, and partners who strengthen local agency rather than control it.

And that's not easy work, but it's the work every society that cares about freedom and human dignity eventually has to do.

So, the title, Renewing the Promise, leaves with one question to ponder. Whether promise only becomes only memory, or whether it becomes practice.

That practice can begin wherever people choose to listen, rebuild trust, create opportunity, and take responsibility for a shared future.

Thank you.