After his family fled conflict in South Sudan, Peter Kidi was born in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya – where he has spent his entire life. Today, he writes powerful poems about life in the camp; poems that are, as he says, written ‘from the inside not as a subject, but as a witness and creator’. Now his work is winning international attention, notably a collaboration with the UK’s London School of Economics that will lead to a publication later this year. He speaks to FP2P about his life, his art and what his community wants from international aid organisations. 

If the development sector is serious about decolonisation, it must stop confusing optics with real, transformational change, argues Awssan Kamal.

What does it mean for international NGOs to truly shift power? At Oxfam, we think our fund for grassroots women’s rights organisations, which is founded on the principle that our partners should decide what to spend money on, holds some of the answers. Oxfam GB CEO Dr Halima Begum writes here about a project that last week won two 2025 Charity Awards. 

Here in Nigeria, and around the world, programmes too often fail to deliver the diet that children aged 5-19 need to thrive, says Tolulope Jayeola, who is a Youth Partner of the NGO Emergency Nutrition Network. She introduces a new paper that sets out how they can get better food and a real voice in programmes, with a core demand of at least one nutritious meal a day.

Should rich countries focus aid on fragile states? Drop development and just fund humanitarian work? Make aid a tool of soft power? The current debate on how to spend dwindling aid budgets is a depressing read, says Neil McCulloch. Let’s stop thinking about how to “buy results” and instead look at how best to support domestic initiatives for progressive change.

How to finance real water justice around the globe? Jo Trevor on four insights from a thought-provoking workshop at the recent Marmalade Festival in Oxford.

Vadym Georgienko introduces an innovative democracy programme in Ukraine that offers real influence over how community funds are spent to those who get active in civic and community life, whether that’s by clearing leaves, planting greenery or knitting socks. Want to find out more about these citizen tokens? Come to the online conference Citizen Capital: From Within next week, on June 12.

Duncan Green introduces the brand-new edition of an Oxfam course for changemakers that he helped to design. And you can now learn how to make change happen in Arabic, French and Spanish, as well as English…

Duncan Green reviews a new book by a giant in the field of community organising and explores the differences between that approach to driving change and the policy-focused advocacy typically used by NGOs.

What happens when you support communities unconditionally to act as they see fit to tackle malnutrition? You get initiatives that seem, on the face of it, a long way from typical malnutrition interventions, whether that’s making soap, refurbishing a health centre or starting a poultry farm. Stephanie Buell of Action Contre la Faim on the “Boolo Xeex Xibon” project in Senegal – and how it actually put the community at the centre of the fight against malnutrition.

Ajoy Datta draws five lessons from an analysis of how an international membership organisation influenced the 2023 High Seas Treaty.

Global inequality will continue to spiral in a skewed system of international finance and governance that heavily favours the Global North, says Anthony Kamande in the latest blog in our Davos series.