Featured image for “How a Women’s Organization became ‘chief architects’ of the COVID-19 response in Southern India”

How a Women’s Organization became ‘chief architects’ of the COVID-19 response in Southern India

March 1, 2021
Guest post by Aysha Shamsuddin We live in times where solidarity has emerged as more critical than anything else. Not even a day goes by without coming across some extraordinary stories of solidarity and leadership. I would like to discuss one such story of a women’s solidarity network- Kudumbashree from Kerala, a small state in southern India. Kudumbashree means ‘prosperity
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What kinds of ‘Agency’ are emerging as grassroots organizations respond to Covid?

February 18, 2021
Six months in, the ‘Emerging Agency in a time of Covid’ project is coming along nicely, and starting to generate some interesting insights. We recently spent 90 minutes on a call with the ‘cluster convenors’ – people who have offered to host discussions with groups of people around the world on particular issues (faith organizations, social movements, women’s rights, peace-building
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Three months in, how is the Emergent Agency in a Time of Covid project shaping up?

December 22, 2020
One of the bright spots in a generally crap year has been the Emergent Agency project. It emerged in the early weeks of the pandemic from a brief conversation with Armine Ishkanian, who runs the LSE’s Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity (AFSEE) programme. Would Covid lead to new forms of grassroots organization? Wouldn’t it be interesting to monitor
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How has the Pandemic Affected Civic Space? New Report

December 21, 2020
Guest post from Niranjan J. Nampoothiri, who has just started as the Research Assistant on the Emergent Agency in a time of Covid project. Delighted to be working with you, Niranjan!   I have been following the literature on Covid-19 and civic space for several months now. One report that I was excited about, the annual People Power under Attack
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Coronavirus as a Catalyst for Global Civil Society: new report

December 8, 2020
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is doing some great research on civil society responses to Covid. It’s latest, published yesterday, is Coronavirus as a Catalyst for Global Civil Society. Its a bit more distanced and neutral than the Civicus work I highlighted recently, and the two approaches complement each other nicely. The Carnegie report’s 94 pages comprise an overview
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How has the Pandemic Affected the Ecosystem on Open Government?

December 3, 2020
A thought-provoking new paper from Abigael Bellows and Nada Zohdy on how the pandemic is influencing the ecosystem of advocacy, campaigns and experimentation to promote open government (aka transparency and accountability). Based on interviews with 125 civil society leaders in 20 countries, in a paper published by the Carnegie Endowment, the authors find that the ‘pandemic has generated a surge
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Featured image for “Next phase in making sense of ’emergent agency in a time of Covid’ kicking off this Wednesday – please join us”

Next phase in making sense of ’emergent agency in a time of Covid’ kicking off this Wednesday – please join us

November 30, 2020
A plug for two rounds of online conversation taking place on Wednesday (2nd December) around the theme of ‘Emergent Agency in a Time of Covid’ The Emergent Agency in a Time of Covid project is definitely the most fun thing in my work at Oxfam right now. Why? First, the discussions so far have been fascinating (check out our webinar
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Featured image for “Is Covid a window of opportunity for localizing aid? Learning from a natural experiment in the Pacific”

Is Covid a window of opportunity for localizing aid? Learning from a natural experiment in the Pacific

November 27, 2020
Guest blog by Chris Roche, Josie Flint and Fiona Tarpey   As the COVID pandemic spread around the world a significant natural experiment took place in the Pacific. The vast majority of non-Pacific international aid workers, technical specialists and diplomats returned to their home countries. Preliminary findings of a real-time monitoring exercise of the effects on development and humanitarian organisations
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Featured image for “#PowerShifts Resources: The Virus of Gender-Based Violence”

#PowerShifts Resources: The Virus of Gender-Based Violence

November 25, 2020
Maria Faciolince introduces one of her amazing resource lists. 25 November is the International Day to End Violence against Women, kicking off #16DaysofActivism. Once considered a private issue pertaining to ‘family matters’, now it is largely recognized as part of large-scale social issues and systemic oppressions. But to make sense of this day, we have to extend our gaze beyond
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Featured image for “What are we seeing so far on Emergent Agency in Covid? Top insights, plus next steps.”

What are we seeing so far on Emergent Agency in Covid? Top insights, plus next steps.

November 18, 2020
Spent an intense two hours last week on a webinar discussing the initial findings, hypotheses etc of our Emergent Agency in a Time of Covid project. We had some great panellists (Laurence Cox, Yogesh Ghore, and Katherine Marshall) on social movements, livelihoods and faith organizations, respectively. I cross examined, Irene Guijt chaired, and a good spread of activists and researchers
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Featured image for “An Uplifting Account of Civil Society Responses to Covid”

An Uplifting Account of Civil Society Responses to Covid

November 10, 2020
A couple of posts to whet your appetite for our seminar on Thursday on ‘Emergent Agency in a time of Covid-19’. Last week Civicus, the global network of civil society organizations (CSOs) published an excellent report on ‘Solidarity in the Time of Covid-19’. It’s an upbeat 60 page snapshot of a vast amount of CSO activity around the world –
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Featured image for “Initial Findings on Emergent Agency in a time of Covid – launch webinar and briefing”

Initial Findings on Emergent Agency in a time of Covid – launch webinar and briefing

November 6, 2020
In September we kicked off a really interesting project on ‘Emergent Agency in a Time of Covid’, asking people if they wanted to be part of a collective effort to share and discuss the grassroots responses to the pandemic and start to explore their longer-term legacy. The response was encouraging (even a bit overwhelming!), and we’ve spent the last couple
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