Don’t worry. Be factful: Review of Factfulness, by Hans and Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Rönnlund

August 8, 2018
Matthew Spencer reviews Hans Rosling’s posthumous manifesto When Hans Rosling, the TED talk phenomenon and professor of international health, was a young doctor in Mozambique in the 1980’s he was berated by a visiting friend and medic for not providing better care for a seriously ill child that been brought into his health clinic. Hans provided the child with a
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Why is Latin America Going Backwards?

July 26, 2018
Simon Ticehurst, Oxfam’s Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, delves into the background of some worrying times for Latin America Just a few years ago Latin America was being lauded as a success story, with stable economic growth, political stability and historical progress in addressing poverty and finally tackling the structural and historical inequality that has stymied development in
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5 ways to fix South Asia’s Water Crisis, by Vanita Suneja

July 17, 2018
Vanita Suneja of WaterAid reports on what is being done to prevent South Asia running out of underground water Major capital cities in South Asia – Dhaka, Delhi, Islamabad, Kabul and Kathmandu – are showing groundwater stress with the water table receding at an alarming rate.  In Islamabad, the water table fell to 30 feet below the surface in 2016,
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Community Driven Development: Howard White and Radhika Menon respond to Scott Guggenheim

July 11, 2018
Howard White and Radhika Menon respond to Scott Guggenheim’s recent post on Community Driven Development Evaluations have two functions: lesson learning and accountability. We believe that our report on community-driven development offers useful lessons for programme managers, practitioners and researchers. Despite posting a blog response to earlier comments, a critical backlash continues. This is disappointing – especially as our ‘critics’
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Public Pressure + League Tables: Oxfam’s campaign on food brands is moving on to supermarkets.

July 5, 2018
Tim Gore explains the evolving theory of change behind Oxfam’s new supermarkets campaign ‘First the brands, now the retailers.‘ That was the reaction of a senior staffer at Mars – one of the 10 biggest global food manufacturers targeted in our award-winning Behind the Brands campaign – to the Behind the Barcodes launch last month. Why did we choose supermarkets
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Scott Guggenheim defends Community Driven Development

June 26, 2018
Scott Guggenheim, one of the better known names in Community Driven Development (CDD), comes out with a take-no-prisoners critique of the critique of CDD by 3ie (apologies for acronym overload), featured in my recent post. It’s long, but I just couldn’t find places to cut it. Duncan obviously thrives on controversy, so he’s asked me to adapt my comment on
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Turning ‘Leave No One Behind’ from promise to reality: Kevin Watkins on the Power of Convergence

June 6, 2018
This post is by Kevin Watkins, Chief Executive of Save the Children UK How do you take your Sustainable Development Goals? With a generous sprinkle of motherhood, apple pie and good intentions? If so, the chances are you’re an enthusiast for the commitment to ‘leave no one behind’ in the pursuit of the 2030 development targets. Me too. It’s tough
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Which is better: a guaranteed job or a guaranteed income?

May 17, 2018
Guest post from Eleanor Chowns of Bath University Martin Ravallion (former Chief Economist of the World Bank, now at CGD) published a useful paper this week asking exactly this question.  As he says, there’s no simple answer – which is why the question is so interesting. Both ‘the right to work’ and ‘the right to income’ aim to secure a
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Mark Goldring on how to maximise the impact of business on poverty and injustice

May 1, 2018
Guest post from Mark Goldring, Oxfam GB’s Chief Executive  Last week I introduced an Oxfam event at which Paul Polman of Unilever and a number of proponents of social enterprises came together to explore what kind of new business models we need to help beat poverty for good. My starting point was that business has played a massive part in
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The UK Labour Party sets out its stall on International Development – here’s why you should take a look

March 28, 2018
I’ve just been reading the UK Labour Party’s Green Paper on International Development (out this week). ‘Green Papers’ are not about the colour (this one is actually red), but ‘designed to stimulate discussion and set the direction for the Labour Party’s programme for government.’ I work for an NGO, so a couple of minor gripes first: the party political point
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International Donors and the exporting of 19th Century Poor Relief to developing countries

March 27, 2018
This post comes from Stephen Kidd, Senior Social Policy Specialist at Development Pathways Early last year, the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper expressed its concern that the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID)  was exporting ‘the dole’ – in other words, a welfare system for the poor – to developing countries through its financing of a range of ‘cash transfer’ schemes
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Can religion play a role in evidence-obsessed governance strategies? Lessons from Tanzania

March 21, 2018
Next up in the Twaweza series, Aikande Clement Kwayu reflects on the development sector’s blind spot with religion When it comes to social change, religion is a double-edged sword. It can be both a force for good and/or for bad. The world-wide positive contribution by religious organisations in providing public services such as health and education is undisputed.  The role
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