December 16, 2019
Please take the reader survey – FP2P is changing fast and we need your feedback and advice! ‘Ha-Joon Chang Thought’ is rapidly becoming A Thing. The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) has just released ‘Economics for People’, a set of 12 lectures by Ha-Joon, who teaches at Cambridge and manages to have rock star status with both my LSE students
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Some reading for Election Day
December 12, 2019
It’s election day in the UK and I’m not allowed to say very much, or Oxfam could get into trouble. So instead, here are some of the best pieces on democracy and elections that have appeared on this blog over the years. Any comparison with current events in Britain is purely accidental. Honest. Democracy’s Retreat: a ‘how to’ guide. Book
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5 keys to successfully supporting small & medium enterprises
December 6, 2019
Dear Reader, Please take the new FP2P reader survey – we really need your feedback to get new ideas and keep on improving! 2 minutes max (honest). Guest post from Exfamer Nicholas Colloff, who now runs Argidius, a private family foundation that supports intermediaries that help businesses grow and create quality employment in low income communities. A diversified, resilient economy
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Book Review: Great Policy Successes, Mallory E. Compton and Paul T. Hart (eds)
December 5, 2019
Stop Press: Please take the new FP2P reader survey – we really need your feedback to get new ideas and keep on improving! 2 minutes max (honest). Loved the idea of this Open Access book from the moment I saw the subtitle: ‘Or, A Tale About Why It’s Amazing That Governments Get So Little Credit for Their Many Everyday and
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We (really) want to hear from you – so please take the FP2P reader survey
December 4, 2019
Dear readers/listeners, Please tell us what you think about From Poverty to Power on our new reader survey. We would really appreciate you clicking on it! (Two minutes of your time once every few years is all we’re asking). It’s particularly important because there have been a few changes this year – notably Maria Faciolince running the #PowerShifts project to highlight more work and ideas around ‘development’
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Why the World Bank is missing out on an Accountability Revolution: Reflections on the Global Partnership for Social Accountability Forum 2019
December 3, 2019
Naomi Hossain of the Accountability Research Center has an out of body experience at the World Bank With raw people power on world-wide display, the Global Partnership for Social Accountability Partners’ Forum 2019 gathered last month at the World Bank in Washington DC for a potentially well-timed discussion of ‘The Challenge of Inclusion’. The GPSA works with 300 partners in
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Mapping local knowledge to regenerate lands in climate-changed times
November 29, 2019
This photo story explores how indigenous Tharakan people from central Kenya are reviving their customary laws, natural sites, indigenous seeds and the life of their territory in climate-changed times. It tells the process of mapping their local knowledge to forge paths and build alliances in their struggle to protect their cultures and lands. This process was led by SALT and
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What’s still missing from climate and development talks?
November 27, 2019
With COP25 around the corner (now hosted in Madrid) and the first review of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or Global Goals behind us, what are some gaps and opportunities to look out for? Below are some insights from Maria Theresa (Tetet) Nera Lauron, an advocate with deep knowledge of both global development and climate change discussions. Tetet is an
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Why so many Uprisings? Why now?
November 26, 2019
Somethin is happening here: Every day my timeline highlights a different uprising – today it is a national strike in Colombia, with hundreds of thousands protesting in support of the faltering peace process, despite the pouring rain (thanks to Hong Kong, at least umbrellas are cool now). But it could equally well have been Iran, Iraq, Bolivia, Lebanon, Chile, Hong
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What kinds of Movements are emerging to tackle inequality? New report
November 22, 2019
Just been reading a really nice analysis of ‘the growing movement fighting inequality’, published this week by the Fight Inequality Alliance. Up to now, much of the discussion on inequality has either been about the problem, or the policy solutions. There’s been much less analysis of the movements springing up to respond to it. Until now. The new report is
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What are the Simple Rules that guide our Strategies?
November 21, 2019
Thanks Paul Knox-Clarke for sending me ‘Strategy as Simple Rules’, a 2001 Harvard Business Review article that helps clarify some fairly fuzzy stuff I’ve been writing here and elsewhere on ‘strategic rules of thumb’. The basic idea is that when strategizing, large organizations spend too much time discussing the ‘what’ (climate change? Gender? Education? Livelihoods?), and too little on the
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8 key Messages on Promoting Empowerment and Accountability in Messy Places
November 20, 2019
Please read the synthesis report for the Action for Empowerment and Accountability (A4EA) research programme – it’s written by John Gaventa and Katy Oswald, and is a model for how to communicate a large body of research in an accessible and practitioner-friendly way. (Full disclosure, I’ve contributed four papers to A4EA as part of my Oxfam role, but had nothing
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