How can grassroots aid programmes influence the wider system?

April 30, 2015
In the first of two posts on how aid agencies can use their grassroots work to exert wider influence, Erinch Sahan discusses his work with livelihoods programmes (jobs, incomes etc). Tomorrow, I’ll discuss the conditions for such ‘joined-up influencing’ to work. “Give someone a fish and you feed them for a day; teach someone to fish and you feed them
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Political (and some other) priorities in Nepal as of 28 April 2015

April 29, 2015
Reflections from Kathmandu by John Bevan, a friend and former UN official who has worked in Haiti – before and after the 2010 quake, as well as Nepal (2003/4 and 2006/7). This piece does not represent Oxfam’s official views, but offers a fascinating insight into what is likely to happen next. Today is day four of the emergency and the
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Could the UN’s new Progress of the World’s Women provide the foundations for feminist economic policy?

April 28, 2015
Yesterday I went to the London launch of UN Women’s new flagship report, Progress of the World’s Women 2015-16, in the slightly incongruous setting of the Institution of Civil Engineers – walls adorned with portraits of bewigged old patriarchs  from a (happily) bygone era (right). The report is excellent. These big multilateral publications are usually a work of synthesis, bringing
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Links I Liked

April 27, 2015
Europe’s migrant shame – a cartoon because words can’t suffice [h/t Alex Evans and Shulem Stern] The ups & downs of Sweden’s ‘feminist foreign policy’ UKIP  and the public debate on UK aid My life has changed completely: Yemeni Oxfam programme officer describes his family’s flight from the capital, fear  and the daily grind. 10 tricks to appear smart in
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Here are some of the books that changed my life. What are yours?

April 24, 2015
I had a wonderfully self-indulgent day yesterday, spent in springtime Barcelona to give a talk on ‘the books that changed my life’, invited by ISGlobal, a health thinktank. The occasion was St George’s Day, when in Catalunya, the tradition is for men to give women a rose, and women give men a book. I know. Apparently the gender division has
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Lifting the lid on the household: A new way to measure individual deprivation

April 23, 2015
Guest post on an important new initiative from Scott Wisor, Joanne Crawford, Sharon Bessell and Janet Hunt You don’t have to look far to find assertions that up to 70% of the world’s poor are women ‑ despite Duncan’s efforts to show   that the claim cannot be substantiated. Just last month, ONE launched a new campaign called “Poverty is
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Scale, Failure, Replication and Gardening: Continuing the Discussion on the future of Big Aid.

April 22, 2015
I’ve been having a series of great conversations on the draft of my new paper on the future of INGOs (plenty of time if you want to comment – here it is INGO futures, Green v5 April 2015 (edited)). Some of these have been under Chatham House Rules, so no names/organizations, but here are some of the standout topics that
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Is a Data Revolution under way, and if so, who will benefit?

April 21, 2015
Guest post from the beach big Data Festival in Cartagena, Colombia, by Oxfam’s Head of Research and paid up member of the numerati, Ricardo Fuentes-Nieva (@rivefuentes) A spectre is haunting the hallways of the international bureaucracy and national statistical offices – the spectre of the data revolution.  Now, that might suggest a contradiction in terms or the butt of a
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Links I Liked

April 20, 2015
China and the West: Not bad for a text written 113 years ago [h/t Branko Milanovic]. ‘The road to development is paved with bad inventions’. Excellent Ben Ramalingam blog on Innovation ‘How to get governments and aid organizations to adapt to the good and throw out the bad?’ Chris Blattman riffs on a Dani Rodrik interview States are actually responsible
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Sport can reach places where other aid and development programmes struggle. So why are we ignoring it?

April 17, 2015
Mel Paramasivan (@melparamasivan) says she was ‘that kid who was always picked last’. But now she is the Communications and Fundraising Manager at the Sport for Development charity International Inspiration, who are credited for all the pics in this piece. “Oh, that’s nice” was the patronising response from another delegate at an international women’s rights conference when I explained how
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Where have we got to on Theories of Change? Passing fad or paradigm shift?

April 16, 2015
Theories of change (ToCs) – will the idea stick around and shape future thinking on development, or slide back into the bubbling morass of aid jargon, forgotten and unlamented? Last week some leading ToCistas at ODI, LSE and The Asia Foundation and a bunch of other organisations spent a whole day taking stock, and the discussion highlighted strengths, weaknesses and some
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What has cancer taught me about the links between medicine and development? Guest post by Chris Roche

April 15, 2015
My friend and How Change Happens co-conspirator Chris Roche (@croche123) has had a rough year, but has used it to reach some interesting insights into the links between medicine and development. In July last year I was diagnosed with a pancreatic neuro-endocrine tumour. This is a rare disease and thankfully usually not as lethal as exocrine pancreatic cancer. Some people
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