Health Warning: Danny Sriskandarajah is both a friend, and my former boss at Oxfam GB, and this blog is hosted by Oxfam, so everything you’re about to read is horribly compromised. Still reading? OK then, here goes. The title pretty much tells you what’s inside. Power to the People is a big picture, determinedly optimistic call to arms that argues

Guest post from Greg Power In July the UK witnessed its highest ever rate of electoral turnover, with 335 MPs – or 51% – elected to the House of Commons for the first time.  This is exceptionally high by UK standards, which usually has a rate of around 20%.  But many parliaments routinely lose at least half their members at

Ducked out of my annual pilgrimage to the Edinburgh Fringe recently (highly recommended, as ever – highlight was being invited up on stage and asked to impersonate a Norwegian comedian’s cervix. Not something I’ll forget in a hurry….) to spend an hour or two with the Scottish Government development team. Really interesting. In some ways, the SG is prototyping post-$

The GELI webinars I’ve been hosting with senior leaders in the aid sector have come to an end for the moment, and I’m going to really miss them. Sitting in on a bunch of frontline bosses exchanging top tips on influencing is a real privilege (see my previous post on ‘How do you Influence the State when Leaders change every

Duncan Green and Tom Kirk are planning a new initiative at the LSE: working title ‘Programme on Intentional Influencing and Advocacy’ (catchy eh?). To kick off, they want to pick your brains on what is already out there both in terms of evidence, and training programmes. Here’s their ask: First, the evidence. What do we know about how citizens and

Interesting session the other night with the incoming UK Minister for International Development, Anneliese Dodds, and a panel of worthies from across the aid and dev sector, who launched into extended elevator pitches to the new minister (it reminded me a bit of the SDG Christmas Tree, in which every lobbyist insisted on their issue being included during the design

Terrible news came through this week – the sudden, unexpected and horribly premature death of my friend and colleague, Pablo Suarez. Pablo was a maverick, Boston-based Argentine who broke boundaries and charted new paths in communicating some of the most pressing challenges of our age. Can’t believe he’s gone, and judging by the outpouring of grief and memories on social

Nothing like a slightly drunken dinner table argument for getting the mental juices flowing. Most recently, I had a slight disagreement (memories a little vague) with a medic friend over child rights. I started holding forth about some work I did in the 90s that totally changed my view of children (I was a relatively new father at the time).

I finished my 20 year stint at Oxfam at the end of April, and as it recedes in the rear view mirror, I’ve been thinking about the future role of INGOs with a bit more distance. Spoiler, I don’t think they should shut up shop in the name of decolonization or anything else – there is important work still to

This is one of those books that makes you ask, ‘why haven’t we had one of these before?’ The Politics of Development starts from the premise that all development is political, and expertly unpacks the evidence for that assertion and the implications for thinking and practice. In terms of content, as well as the focus on politics, and its ‘3I’

Imagine a job where you literally eavesdrop on private (Chatham House rule) conversations between leaders working on the frontlines of international development – trying to influence governments, donors and others, mainly in the insider spaces open to UN agencies, the Red Cross/Crescent and NGOs (both international and national). Amazingly, I have just such a job, running the GELI programme on

As I skimmed the new edition of How Change Happens, what struck me most was not the text, but the endorsements. When it first came out in 2016, I was full of busyness, cracking on with the next thing etc. Now, as I exit Oxfam and have a bit more downtime, I can appreciate things better. Not only that, but