Fancy some good news on an epidemic? DRC: Last Ebola patient discharged with end of outbreak in sight. Check out Oxfam’s Make Change Happen MOOC (free online course), now in its 4th outing. Hundreds of great activists worldwide swapping stories and sharpening ideas. Why did this UN ad irk women aid workers? What’s it like being Greta Thunberg’s mum? Riveting

Bumper crop this week, so 22 minutes of me summing up

I sat down recently with Saleemul Huq, a scientist and activist who has attended every single global negotiation on climate change since 1992. Saleem is Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) in Bangladesh and Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Environment & Development (IIED) in London. We discussed the evolving climate debate and ended

This post got a lot of help from Severine Deneulin – thanks! I get a bit frustrated with the conversation on aid – too often, we seem to be expected to pick one of two equally unappealing camps: ‘all aid is bad’ v ‘all aid is good’. People tend to land on a single issue – growth, accountability, safeguarding –

Some interesting research on the realities of CSOs in the Global South and their interaction with the aid sector is coming out of the Netherlands (see last week’s post for more on this theme). Check out this new paper by the ‘Civil Society Research Collective’ – Margit van Wessel, Suparana Katyaini, Yogesh Mishra, Farhat Naz, B. Rajeshwari, Rita Manchanda, Reetika

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Guest post by Nick Galasso of Oxfam America The resurgence of far-right populism, from Brazil to Europe to India and the US, presents a challenge to NGOs unforeseen even a few years ago. The common thread of ethno-nationalism, coupled with calls to revive traditional gender roles and values, is making it harder to protect refugees and ethnic minorities, advance gender

Wangũi wa Kamonji is an independent researcher, dancer, writer and facilitator centering Africa, ancestrality and the Earth in her work. She is based in Kenya and is a fellow at the Climate and Environmental Justice Media program with FRIDA – The Young Feminist Fund in partnership with OpenGlobalRights. This piece was published as part of this partnership, by OpenGlobalRights. Sabella Kaguna

‘INGOs have a mixed track record of engagement with in-country mission-driven organizations and need to be encouraged to engage with transparency, respect, and genuine partnership.’ Good suggestions for how to do so from Ruth Levine ht Rakesh Rajani Nice New Yorker piece on degrowth vs green growth with a big shout-out to rock start exfamer Kate Raworth ht Ken Shadlen

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By Teniola Tayo Before I came to study for a Masters in International Development at the London School of Economics in September 2019, I had never been to Europe – or to any part of the Western world for that matter. The “Global North”, if you like. However, I never thought that the fact that I had lived the entire

What’s the half life of different social media (time it takes for a piece of content to reach 50% of its total lifetime engagement) ht @anutopiaa Why systems thinking changes how we think about development. Good student write-up of great Owen Barder LSE lecture ‘Why are people protesting? Using data for 118 countries from 2007 to 2014, we find that