“It feels like history”
A people’s movement is rising in Zimbabwe. Is aid and philanthropy paying attention?
A people’s movement is rising in Zimbabwe. Is aid and philanthropy paying attention?
“You’ll see that we have few resources but, what we do have, we use as best as we can.” Sharing a booklet produced by Cassa Banana Community Health Committee in Zimbabwe.
One of my favorite podcasts, The Moth, features New Voices Fellows from the Aspen Institute.
How has US foreign assistance funding changed over the last sixty years?
Weh Yeoh of whydev.org argues that everything that we do in development is about selling a message. But how do we convince people when a message goes against the grain of what they already believe?
“Little did Rumbidzai know that her poem would become a piece of art that would serve to illuminate the journey the partner organizations were about to begin.” From “Narratives of Hope ‘It Starts Within Us’: Documenting Development Through Stories of Change”, published by Weaver Press.
Maybe my cowgirl dreams have finally come true. Because now…this farmer’s daughter is working for the aid cowboys.
How-matters.org’s Friday feature! Sharing “When sorrow comes” by A. Powell Davies as a tribute to my late grandfather and to the Gwai Grandmothers in Mberengwa, Zimbabwe.
Weh Yeoh of whydev.org argues that everything that we do in development is about selling a message. But how do we convince people when a message goes against the grain of what they already believe?
Link to my interview in The Displaced Nation: “RANDOM NOMAD: Jennifer Lentfer, International Aid Consultant, Writer & Blogger”
“Now my heart is in relating human to human,” she said. “Forget class, forget race, this is the reason God sent me here.” (Gasp!) Sharing an article written about me in 1998.
“NGOs tend to view CBOs in two ways: with suspicion and mistrust on the one hand, and as instruments for community organising and project implementation on the other.” Excerpt from a paper by Samuel Maruta, Southern Institute of Peace-building and Development, Zimbabwe.
In the wake of such tragedy in Japan, let us never forget the long-term, slow-moving disasters of poverty, inequality and injustice around the rest of the world, where funding IS readily needed.
We need smart people to identify what works, yes. We also need these same smart people to utilize their skills to meet organizations where they are, rather than trying to form them into versions of ourselves.