Some cracking gallows humour from India ‘Aid, corruption, & neighbours in need: A reporter reflects on Somalia’s drought.’ Brilliant piece: ‘When I asked a woman at a camp recently what it felt like being dependent on NGO handouts for years on end, she replied “We feel like we have no soul.” And one for UK readers… Ministerial Whatsapp exchange during

Themrise Khan, Kanakulya Dickson and Maika Sondarjee introducing their new book Since the racial uprising following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the world has been faced with the reality of racism in most of what is known as the progressive, Western world. Movements like Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall have brought to the forefront the ingrained

Victoria Stetsko introduces Oxfam’s “Feminist Power” campaign for International Women’s Day, where it will be celebrating organisations across the globe fighting for rights and respect for women and queer people “Hearts starve as well as bodies: give us bread, but give us roses,” sang striking women workers in the early 20th century United States. That movement’s famous demand for “Bread

Russia is now the biggest arms exporter to Africa, but what’s going on in Algeria? Can a systems change approach improve disaster management? Really interesting case study from Indonesia Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse: ’ Taliban bans contraception calling use a ‘western conspiracy’ The rise and fall of innovation labs in the aid sector. ‘German ballet

Talking you through this week’s posts, while you do the washing up/walk the dog Links I LikedFive types of humanitarian influence Upshift: Turning Pressure into Performance and Crisis into Creativity 

Ben Ramalingam introduces his new book In Upshift: Turning Pressure into Performance and Crisis into Creativity, I set out to explore how stress, pressure and crisis can be transformed into performance and creativity through a process that I call ‘Upshifting’. This book was originally inspired by my work on humanitarian innovation. But as I researched and learned, the scope expanded

Loved this piece from Hugo Slim, first posted on the Humanitarian Law and Policy blog. Influence is typically conceived as a subtle form of power that is indirect, unconscious, or deliberately hidden. Influencers are often off-stage rather than on it, whispering behind a curtain, appearing in dreams, or using magic of some kind. Influence tends to work gradually, seeping gently

Apologies for the initial dose of anglocentrism in today’s LiL. Just couldn’t help myself….. Kieran Hodgson does (all of) Happy Valley. Priceless. ht James Norton Pope Francis’s visit to the DRC: The Congolese are divided over the Pontiff’s pronouncements Oxfam GB boss Danny Sriskandarajah gets grilled on BBC Hardtalk. Video and podcast. Don’t think they laid a glove on him

Links I LikedIs Class the Missing Dimension in the Aid Sector’s search for Diversity? Great New Guide to ‘Systems Thinking and Practice’Book Review: The Systems Work of Social Change

Following on yesterday’s post on a new guide to Systems Thinking and Practice, this was the last and most interesting of my Christmas break catch-up reads. It also had the longest title. In full: ‘The Systems Work of Social Change: How to Harness Connection, Context, and Power to Cultivate Deep and Enduring Change’. (I think the punctuation is wrong, but

I’m always on the lookout for good guides to the practical implications of systems thinking, so got very excited when I came across Systems Thinking and Practice: A guide to concepts, principles and tools for FCDO and partners, by Jim Woodhill and Juliet Millican. Its 38 pages are stuffed full of crisp summaries of the main ideas, case studies applying

Guest post by Lauren Anderson, who was one of my Activism students last year Recently, the right wing press has been coming for the volunteers working to support refugees in Northern France, and I am writing here as one of them. The right wing response has been to vilify the efforts of volunteer organisations, claiming they are engaging in “assisting”