Featured image for “Think tanks are struggling. They need to change.”

Think tanks are struggling. They need to change.

October 25, 2023
Guest post by Enrique Mendizabal of On Think Tanks Just 15% of respondents say it’s getting easier to operate as a think tank, according to the 2023 Think tank state of the sector report. And over 50% of respondents in Latin America & the Caribbean, the USA & Canada, and Africa say it is getting harder to operate. I think
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Featured image for “What Tactics are most Effective in Non-Violent Protest?”

What Tactics are most Effective in Non-Violent Protest?

October 24, 2023
Continuing on yesterday’s theme of the ups and downs of mass protest, I met (albeit via zoom) with Srjda Popovic, one of my protest heroes, last week. Srdja’s a Serbian political activist who cut his activist teeth as a leader of the student movement Otpor that helped topple Serbian president Slobodan Milošević. He established the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) in 2003 and
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Featured image for “Why did the Street Movements of the 2010s fail?”

Why did the Street Movements of the 2010s fail?

October 23, 2023
Been reading some interesting (and challenging) reflections on protest movements recently, so the next two days will cover what I’ve learned. First up a Guardian ‘long read’ from Vincent Bevins, a journo, on ‘Why did the Street Movements of the 2010s fail’. The piece is based on his new book,  If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing
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Featured image for “What would make an Atheist spend a day discussing Faith and Development?”

What would make an Atheist spend a day discussing Faith and Development?

October 19, 2023
Had a good chat last week about one of my enduring hobby-horses: the role of faith in development, and the aid sector’s massive secular blind spot. The conversation was with Christian Aid’s Lila Caballero Sosa, who (with Islamic Relief, the Joint Learning Initiative and the University of Leeds) is putting together a big event on faith and development for next
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Featured image for “How do we talk about Older People in Development and Activism?”

How do we talk about Older People in Development and Activism?

October 12, 2023
Had a nice chat with Cherian Mathews, the incoming head of HelpAge International, this week, which got me thinking about how we talk about the role of older people in development. Our conversation on possible future directions for HAI mainly centred on narratives and tactics. Narratives Obviously no one wants to go with ‘older people as victims’, which manages to
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Featured image for “Do our LSE Activism Students know it all already?”

Do our LSE Activism Students know it all already?

October 5, 2023
To get the brain juices of our record number of new LSE activism students flowing last week, we came up with an ‘ice breaker’, albeit on a very serious topic. Although LSE has a pretty comprehensive policy on sexual harassment and sexual violence, it does not currently publish the stats on reporting or resolution of cases. How could a campaign
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Featured image for “New Version of the free online ‘Make Change Happen’ course launched this week – check it out”

New Version of the free online ‘Make Change Happen’ course launched this week – check it out

October 3, 2023
One of the more enjoyable things I’ve been involved in at Oxfam in recent years is the Make Change Happen MOOC (Massive Open Online Course – where have you been?). A new version is launching this week – if you haven’t already done it, let me try and persuade you to sign up/promote it to your networks.  When joining the
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Featured image for “How Local Women Mobilizers Shaped Ukraine’s Invasion Response”

How Local Women Mobilizers Shaped Ukraine’s Invasion Response

October 2, 2023
This guest post by Esther Brito Ruiz first appeared on the Global Policy blog. The impacts of Russia’s war in Ukraine have been deeply gendered: from human traffickers targeting women and children fleeing airstrikes, to the increase in gender-based violence, rising feminized poverty, and haunting testimonies of sexual violence.  Yet despite these disproportionate vulnerabilities, Ukrainian women have also emerged as vital agents of resistance: as
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Featured image for “Finishing a 2nd Edition of How Change Happens – here are drafts of two new chapters for you to read. Comments please!”

Finishing a 2nd Edition of How Change Happens – here are drafts of two new chapters for you to read. Comments please!

September 26, 2023
I spent the summer toiling away on updating How Change Happens. Luckily the weather was pretty rubbish, so I didn’t resent it too much. Most of the chapter updates were just that – adding more recent stats, a few new references, a generally more sombre take, given that the first edition appeared just months before Brexit and Trump. But there
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Featured image for “Fancy some Good News? Brits are getting nicer.”

Fancy some Good News? Brits are getting nicer.

September 21, 2023
Fancy some good news? A fascinating piece in today’s Guardian outlines the magnitude of the norm shifts that have taken place in the UK after the last 40 years, based on the latest British social attitudes (BSA) survey, which is marking its 40th year of mapping Britain’s cultural and political landscape. Underneath the left-right pendulum shifts of political debate, the
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Featured image for “What can we learn from how an Adaptive Management programme has navigated Myanmar’s current chaos?”

What can we learn from how an Adaptive Management programme has navigated Myanmar’s current chaos?

September 19, 2023
I accompanied a project in Myanmar that ran from August 2017 to October 2021 implemented by DT Global. This blog is written together with guest bloggers Jane Lonsdale and Kelly Robertson. As part of the programme’s final output, we wrote a ‘reflection paper’, discussing what ended up as being an important natural experiment in Adaptive Management (AM), as a governance
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Featured image for “Top Student blogs: Green to Go: The Better Way to Take Away”

Top Student blogs: Green to Go: The Better Way to Take Away

August 16, 2023
I’m posting some of the best work from this year’s LSE activism students this week. Here’s Martin Caforio (mcaforio@icloud.com if you want to see his full campaign strategy and/or offer him a job) introducing his campaign. When you get a daily coffee, your local chain tells you the cup is “sustainable.” Recyclable plastic, compostable, responsibly sourced and produced. But even
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