Oxfam GB’s Danny Sriskandarajah  assesses words v deeds in Rishi Sunak’s performance on the climate crisis After initially dithering on whether to attend the COP27 climate summit this week, Prime Minister Sunak seems to have packed his Climate Superhero costume for his trip to Sharm-El-Sheikh. His speech was not short of promises – to turn the UK into a ‘clean energy

I’m off to Papua New Guinea in a couple of weeks in the role of ‘critical friend’ (more on that weird job description in due course) to a big Aussie-funded aid program (the A$87m Building Community Engagement in PNG Program) run by DT Global (as Cardno is now called). They’ve just published an excellent guidance note on Adaptive Management, written

Gave a ‘Sussex Development Lecture’ last week. The title (with apologies to John Lennon): ‘Imagine there‘s no Money; It‘s easy if you try‘. Here’s the powerpoint – feel free to nick the slides. Some points from what I learned both from writing the lecture and the Q&A: Firstly, on aid quantity, I have been trapped in a bit of a

Great, pull-no-punches twitter thread from Stefan Dercon in response to the new UK Government’s decision to appoint Andrew Mitchell as Minister for Development (still within the merged FCDO though). Here’s an edited version, with his permission. Welcome Mr Mitchell, but you have your work cut out. All eyes will be on the budgets. They are in an absolute mess. A

LSE International Development student Henry Whitelaw draws on his experience with a volunteering programme in the Pacific islands to ask whether ‘voluntourism’ can facilitate meaningful development. First published on the LSE International Development blog. As students of development and keen volunteers, we are repeatedly warned of the bogeyman of ‘voluntourism’ – a vicious creature lurking beneath the well-meaning façade of

Last in the current snapshots of the GELI Influencing programme I’ve been leading this year. We’ve had blogs on all the other elements – the Face to Face meetings, the ‘user experience’, the podcasts with experts. Here’s a write up (Chatham House rule) of the missing piece – the online modules, in this case on analysis. 7 senior aid folk

Eight decades after Oxfam began with a meeting in an Oxford church, we must respond to challenges our founders could not have dreamed of, from re-imagining what an international NGO should be, to the need for totally new sources of funding, to the world-changing impact of technology, says Oxfam GB CEO Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah One of my favourite bits of Oxfam

For our Global Executive Leadership Initiative training on influencing, I interviewed Wilf Mwamba, a long term FCDO/DFID practitioner-thinker on TWP, now working in the private sector. With GELI’s permission, I’m reposting here, along with an abbreviated transcript. The podcast is 25 minutes – well worth it, IMO. WM: I work for DAI Global, a US international consultancy firm. I’m leading a

Very interesting conversations last week on how INGOs are responding to closing civic space (Chatham House rule, so no more detail than that, I’m afraid). Some headlines: In India, and probably many other countries, the attack on civil society organizations is just one facet of a wider offensive against liberal democracy and liberal values. Elsewhere it is just one part

I recently interviewed William Chemaly, coordinator of the Global Protection Cluster Here’s a transcript of the highlights DG: Hi William, you have one of those terribly important sounding jobs that no one outside the humanitarian sector understands. Maybe you could explain who you are and what you do to begin with? WC: Thanks Duncan. Protection is the heart and soul

Two participants from our recent influencing training in Panama (Thomas Dunmore Rodriguez, National Influencing Adviser at Oxfam, and Alice Shackelford, UN Resident Coordinator in Honduras) discuss what they learned and the implications for more effective advocacy A couple of weeks ago the GELI course on Influencing for Senior Leaders brought representatives from the UN and several national and international NGOs

Well that was intense. We’ve just come to the end of a one year programme to design and deliver a training course on ‘influencing’ to senior aid leaders (UN, INGOs, Red Cross/Crescent and National NGOs). 6 months to design the materials and methodology; the rest to deliver the training to 6 cohorts of 25 people in 5 locations around the