It feels a bit odd to be reviewing a book when you’ve just had breakfast with the author, but I finished reading Hugo Slim’s overview of the Humanitarian system and its future on the way to a workshop we are both delivering in Nairobi, so good to write it up while it’s still fresh. First, the weird title: Solferino 21:

Depressed by the zombification of Britain’s official aid system, I am looking further afield for inspiration/new thinking and came across this recent paper on a series of innovations at USAID. Larry Garber, Gretchen King and Karen Hirschfeld looked at 4 initiatives: co-creation; engaging new and non-traditional actors via the New Partnerships Initiative (NPI); convening power; and integrated programming (apologies for

I’ve been catching up on the news after a week away in Amman running the first pilot training session in our ‘Influencing for Senior Leaders’ course (huge fun, blogs to follow). Among the less enjoyable updates was the latest evidence for the wanton vandalism being inflicted on the UK’s aid programme. Two sets of contrasting provisional stats for 2021 were

Lisa Denney tries to restore a little cautious optimism to last week’s Eeyore-ish takes (by me and The Asia Foundation) on the nature and impact of TWP Is thinking and working politically (TWP) on life support? Duncan suggested as much in a recent post.  But a webinar on localisation convened by the TWP Community of Practice offers an alternative, in

Guest post by Justin Derbyshire, CEO of HelpAge International  The war in Ukraine has destroyed everybody’s lives regardless of who they are. We have watched in horror as children have been passed over heads onto trains, at fathers left to fight, and a steady trail of exhausted, traumatised people of all ages fleeing further West  But it is an uncomfortable

Nicola Nixon, Kim McQuay, Peter Yates, Sumaya Saluja and Su Lae Yi, all of The Asia Foundation, continue our posts questioning the impact of the whole Adaptive Management/ Thinking and Working Politically Thing (I did my bit yesterday). Throughout 2021, we spent many hours talking with civil society organizations about adaptive management. We engaged with over 100 civil society organizations

Going into self-doubt mode for the rest of this week, on the feasibility and impact of the ‘second orthodoxy’. Students can be great at pointing out the contradictions in your thinking and this year’s LSE cohort seem particularly good at it. A recent set of student-led seminars focussed on Adaptive Management and Thinking and Working Politically (AM/TWP) and connected a

Guest post by Roba Aldaour, an Oxfam Public Health and WASH practitioner in Gaza We recently tried to find out how aid practitioners and affected populations think about Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) and how they differ in their views. The results of our survey hold important lessons for WASH programmes and their funders around the world. Unsurprisingly, the top

Arbie Baguios, Maia King, Alex Martins and Rosie Pinnington introduce their new paper Localisation and locally-led practice are the latest buzzwords for something that the aid sector, and the local communities and organisations who work with it, has long tried to do. That is, to ensure that local people and communities have the power and agency to drive their own

What are your favourite, well-documented examples of a) public campaigning and b) influencing developing country and donor governments? I’m asking because, as part of the LSE’s impending training programme for senior aid peeps, part of the ‘Global Executive Leadership Initiative’. I have to put together brief annotated ‘further reading/listening/watching’ lists on those two issues. I want more examples of donors

Guest post by Jonathan Fox, introducing his new paper Accountability is often treated as a magic bullet, an all-purpose solution to a very wide range of problems—from corrupt politicians and the quality of public services to systemic injustice and impunity.  Yet accountability reforms struggle to deliver. Has the idea been stretched so far that the buzzword gets watered down into

Guest post from Anna Landre, one of my amazing students, who has bunked off class (with permission) to do some amazing work on Ukraine. And she’s pretty angry about what she’s seen. As a 23-year-old wheelchair user halfway through a Master’s degree at the London School of Economics, I didn’t expect to spend my past week working 16 hours a