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When inclusion is an illusion: sign language interpreters and the pitfalls for ‘inclusive’ development

September 6, 2024
How did a meeting for disabled people in Uganda end up using sign language that local deaf people couldn’t understand? Julia Modern reflects on how that failure is rooted in racialised ideas about who is an expert – and shares six tips for effective deaf inclusion. (And you can also watch a Ugandan Sign Language translation of the blog)
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‘I just won’t give up’ – 13 year old Ogen Ronald thinks football holds the key to a brighter future. And he may be right

May 16, 2019
As northern Uganda continues gradually to recover from the LRA war, peace/youth interventions using sports are playing a vital role. Former Ugandan soccer star and LSE researcher Francis Aloh (right) is studying the work of a Canadian charity, Athletes for Africa (A4A) and reports back on a recent visit. It has been said that football can heal the social wounds
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Can watching a few videos really reduce Violence Against Women?

February 13, 2019
I’m not generally a big fan of randomised control trials (oversold, squeeze out other forms of knowledge – more here), but a recent RCT on violence against women in Uganda by researchers at Columbia University got my attention. Here are some excerpts from the summary on the website of Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA). First the summary of the summary:
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What do Witch Doctors actually do? I interviewed one to find out – their job description may surprise you

December 19, 2018
Guest post from Robin Oryem (@oryem_robin ), a researcher for LSE’s CPAID programme in Northern Uganda. As part of trying to understand how Public Authority operates in such messy places, Robin has been interviewing local witch doctors. One of the things that any Acholi person wants to avoid is to be associated with a witch doctor, but I took courage and
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Bruised but better: the stronger case for evidence-based activism in East Africa

March 22, 2018
Wrapping up Twaweza week, Varja Lipovsek (left) and Aidan Eyakuze reflect on the event that has provided the last week’s posts It was a stormy couple of days in Dar es Salaam. First, it is the rainy season, so the tent in which we held our meeting flapped and undulated over our heads like a loose sail. More importantly, we
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Are grassroots faith organizations better at advocacy/making change happen?

September 28, 2017
As part of thinking about how power operates in fragile/conflict states (for the LSE’s new Centre for Public Authority in International Development, CPAID), I’m doing a bit more reading around the role of different kinds of ‘non state actors’. One of the most influential in many fragile/conflict settings are faith organizations, so I finally got round to reading ‘Bridging the Gap:
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Some feelgood for Monday morning. 500 Ugandan women entrepreneurs lipsynching to Jessie J.

October 21, 2013
Can’t find that much info about it, but this video was made by a Dutch NGO called SYPO to publicise its microfinance crowdsourcing site, microbanker.com. There’s also a couple of youtube clips of the making of the video and the afterparty – which looks a lot of fun. The afterparty clip eased a few qualms (do all women speak enough English to fully understand
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