April 30, 2021
Bens Ramalingam and Kumpf have a thought-provoking new paper out on Covid-linked innovation in poor countries, and the lessons for aid donors. Here are some highlights, and a minor rant it inspired in me. The paper documents a range of fascinating innovations. Here’s a flavour: ‘Problem: A health official in a large city in India is tasked with sourcing quality
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Trust, Politics, Exhaustion and Anger: findings on Emergent Agency in a time of Covid
April 6, 2021
The Emerging Agency in a Time of Covid project is buzzing along nicely. Today (12.30pm, London time, 6th April) Niranjan Nampoothiri will summarize his findings from sorting, summarizing and coding the 200 cases for the project database. Register here. Headline findings here. We had a stocktake webinar recently looking for common patterns from a burgeoning set of discussion groups on
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What can we learn from 200 case studies of ’emergent agency in a time of Covid’?
March 17, 2021
The ‘Emergent Agency in a Time of Covid-19‘ research project is churning out some interesting findings and a flurry of webinars. Here Niranjan Nampoothiri and Filippo Artuso give some headline findings on the 200 case studies Niranjan has analysed and coded. We aim to publish the database later this year. Niranjan will present his findings on 6th April, 12.30 UTC
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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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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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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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#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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