Featured image for “Options for UK Aid: DFID survivor Tom Wingfield responds to last week’s posts by Andy Sumner”

Options for UK Aid: DFID survivor Tom Wingfield responds to last week’s posts by Andy Sumner

February 27, 2024
Tom Wingfield got in touch after reading last week’s posts on the future of UK aid, building off his recent post on LinkedIn Before we shut the door on reversing the DFID/FCO merger (See DFID 2.0…? Part 2 of Andy Sumner’s Crystal Balling on the future of UK aid | From Poverty to Power (oxfam.org.uk), we need to be clear-eyed
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Featured image for “DFID 2.0…? Part 2 of Andy Sumner’s Crystal Balling on the future of UK aid”

DFID 2.0…? Part 2 of Andy Sumner’s Crystal Balling on the future of UK aid

February 22, 2024
In this second blog of two, Andy Sumner of King’s College London asks what a change of government in the UK might mean for UK development cooperation and policy: will a new DFID rise from the ashes? Will ODA spend rise back to 0.7% of GNI? And what might a change of government mean for UK development co-operation’s policy focus?
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DFID 2.0…? Some wild-ish speculation on UK development cooperation, 2025-2030

February 21, 2024
In this first of two blogs, Andy Sumner of King’s College London looks into his crystal ball and ask what a change of government in the UK might mean for UK development cooperation and policy. This first blog asks what has changed since 1997 (when DFID was established) and what a new government would inherit. The second part of the
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Featured image for “GELI Stories – Building Coalitions between UN Agencies and Government Ministries in Eswatini”

GELI Stories – Building Coalitions between UN Agencies and Government Ministries in Eswatini

February 20, 2024
In the second of this series of podcasts with UN and other aid leaders making change happen on the frontline, I talked to Cissy Kabasuuga of WFP about how she managed to unblock a school feeding programme in Eswatini. Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa · GELI Stories-Cissy Kabasuuga on building coalitions within UN & Eswatini for school feeding Duncan: Welcome
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Is Poverty Porn a thing of the past? Yes and No

February 15, 2024
Guest post from Jess Crombie. Jess is a researcher and scholar at UAL, and a consultant for some of the leading organisations in the humanitarian sector. The term Poverty Porn (coined in 1985); the widely criticised (though still widely played) song ‘Do they Know It’s Christmas’; the Lammy/Dooley scandal around Comic Relief; the brutal murder of George Floyd, sparking worldwide
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GELI Stories – Seizing a Chance Meeting with Iran’s President to Unblock Food Shipments

February 13, 2024
One of the best things about the course I give on ‘Influencing for Senior Leaders: Analysis, Strategy, and Practice’ is the anecdotes from the participants, who are working in the most difficult of circumstances and often achieve amazing results. So recently I started recording some of them to come up with a series of ‘GELI Stories’ (GELI is the name
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Featured image for “The Rise of ‘Trust-Based Philanthropy’ – aka Unconditional Cash Transfers to NGOs”

The Rise of ‘Trust-Based Philanthropy’ – aka Unconditional Cash Transfers to NGOs

January 18, 2024
Last week’s Economist had a really useful Special Report by Avantika Chilkoti on the evolving world of philanthropy. It highlighted the rise of what it calls ‘no strings giving’ or ‘trust-based philanthropy’, in which some v big donors have essentially adopted an institutional cash transfer approach: if organizations are doing good work, just sign the cheque and leave them to
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Claire Melamed on Data, Power and Sustainable Development

January 10, 2024
For this podcast, I sat down a few months ago to discuss data and development with Claire Melamed, who runs the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. Apologies for delay, Claire – got caught up in internal traffic. Also apologies for length of this transcript – turns out 30m talking = 2 blog length pieces. Duncan: Like any good Englishman,
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Six big humanitarian policy trends for 2024

January 4, 2024
Irwin Loy and Will Worley have an excellent 2024 curtain raiser on The New Humanitarian, which is now by some distance my favourite aid blog. It’s a bit long by FP2P standards, so I’ve cut it down a bit: Money: Learning to do less with less  In 2023, humanitarians took a look in the mirror and admitted what everyone already knew: They don’t have
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Featured image for “Mia Mottley on Slavery, Poverty, George Floyd, Climate and the Future of the World”

Mia Mottley on Slavery, Poverty, George Floyd, Climate and the Future of the World

December 14, 2023
I was lucky enough to attend the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley’s extraordinary speech at LSE last week (Video here or audio file here). Props to outgoing Oxfam CEO Danny Sriskandarajah and whoever else from Oxfam was involved in pulling it together, along with the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute, who hosted. It was jaw-dropping for both the performance, interweaving
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What’s it like Explaining NGOs to Senior Military types from 40 Countries?

November 30, 2023
Got a grilling from an unusual audience (for me) last week. 100+ senior military officers (colonels and above) from 40 countries, attending what amounts to a UK-sponsored ‘military Masters’ (my words) – a year-long course on strategy for future leaders. Can’t be more specific as it was Chatham House rule. My task was to introduce them to the wonderful world
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UN Women makes Norm Change central to its mission

November 28, 2023
Bafflingly, I was recently invited to an online ‘Expert Group Meeting’ to help UN Women flesh out a really important new strategy – making norm change central to its role. This from the Concept Note for the session: ‘In recognition of the emerging emphasis on an articulated approach to social norms in international development and acknowledging that discriminatory social norms
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