Finding Room for Error
“Having learned from previous failures, we’d developed tools to alleviate these problems, but they didn’t work this time.” A guest post by Mary Fifield, founder and former executive director of Amazon Partnerships Foundation.
“Having learned from previous failures, we’d developed tools to alleviate these problems, but they didn’t work this time.” A guest post by Mary Fifield, founder and former executive director of Amazon Partnerships Foundation.
In games, people are more engaged. They “gain” the experience of having played and can relate what they learned to their own lives, regardless of what happens next in a project or program.
How can development workers harness “in-built” community strengths in the midst of poverty and adversity?
Are Drew, a U.S.-based international relief and development consultant, and Nasira, a Pakistan-based development worker and community-based organization founder, speaking different aid dialects? (Excerpt from a LinkedIn discussion)
Give every aid worker (local and international, cleaner to country director) a social change investment fund of US$1,000, over which they have total personal discretion.
What if the key building blocks of “story” were better understood, experienced, and then related to our day-to-day work in international aid?
The general (and often pejorative) assumption in the development sector that the capacity of “local partners” should be measured by the degree of formal structure is something that must be re-examined.
Relating James Mackie’s video, The Parable of the Blobs and Squares, to international aid, which shows that there is more to people than their problems, that the solution to problems lies in the problem itself, not in an imposed solution.
Effective funding and capacity development initiatives, such as the one featured in this video from Results for Development Institute, are needed to increase the demand for human rights and development at local and international levels.
Justin Timberlake got me thinking on that flight back from Johannesburg… How would aid partnerships change if real-time, on-the-ground data had the same value as aid dollars?
Donors stuck in the old ways of moving money around don’t offer useful capital to new and innovative organizations that don’t fit the mold. Here’s four things a new kind of aid donor does better.
Our own personal reflection is a necessary tool in making aid work and our role as humanitarians more effective.
“It was clear that those who funded the water project would not be as proud of their wells today as they were the day after drilling down into the jungle water table.” Guest post by David Peck, founder of SoChange.
Akhila Kolisetty, creator of the blog Journeys towards Justice, explores how social entrepreneur funders can reduce power imbalances and enable marginalized groups and leaders from around the world to be heard