November 30, 2020
A plug for two rounds of online conversation taking place on Wednesday (2nd December) around the theme of ‘Emergent Agency in a Time of Covid’ The Emergent Agency in a Time of Covid project is definitely the most fun thing in my work at Oxfam right now. Why? First, the discussions so far have been fascinating (check out our webinar
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Development Nutshell: audio round-up (15m) of FP2P posts, w/b 23rd November
November 28, 2020
No excerpt
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Is Covid a window of opportunity for localizing aid? Learning from a natural experiment in the Pacific
November 27, 2020
Guest blog by Chris Roche, Josie Flint and Fiona Tarpey As the COVID pandemic spread around the world a significant natural experiment took place in the Pacific. The vast majority of non-Pacific international aid workers, technical specialists and diplomats returned to their home countries. Preliminary findings of a real-time monitoring exercise of the effects on development and humanitarian organisations
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#PowerShifts Resources: The Virus of Gender-Based Violence
November 25, 2020
Maria Faciolince introduces one of her amazing resource lists. 25 November is the International Day to End Violence against Women, kicking off #16DaysofActivism. Once considered a private issue pertaining to ‘family matters’, now it is largely recognized as part of large-scale social issues and systemic oppressions. But to make sense of this day, we have to extend our gaze beyond
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Power Switch: How We can Reverse Extreme Inequality. Book Review
November 25, 2020
Imagine you’ve written a mini-book (82 pages) setting out your thoughts on a progressive agenda, scheduled to come out in the first days of a Biden Administration. What could possibly go wrong? I can only imagine what my friend and political sparring partner Paul O’Brien was going through in the early hours of 4th November, as a second Trump term
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Links I Liked
November 24, 2020
Covid bookshop ht Sony Kapoor The inequality of climate change. 1% of people cause half of global aviation emissions – new study ht Tim Gore I’m chairing a lecture by Nora Lustig on “Inequality in Latin America: Markets, Covid-19 and Policies” on Friday, 4-6pm UK time. Jean-Paul Faguet is discussant. Livestream here. You can catch up with previous speakers in
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Global Britain or Little Britain? We may find out this week
November 23, 2020
Sam Nadel, Oxfam’s Head of Policy and Advocacy, reflects on a bad week for the UK. Cast your mind back to December 2016. Boris Johnson, then UK Foreign Secretary, is speaking at an event at Chatham House, laying out his vision for the UK’s role in the world. Just six months earlier, the UK had voted to leave the European Union. In
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Development Nutshell: audio round-up (15m) of FP2P posts, w/b 16th November
November 21, 2020
No excerpt
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What have we learned about the care economy from 7 years’ work in 25 countries?
November 20, 2020
Oxfam has just published an interesting overview of its work on unpaid care and domestic work (UCDW) in over 25 countries since 2013, which I recommend as a good intro to an increasingly important topic in the aid and development biz. Firstly, the history: ‘Conversations on UCDW have evolved over the decades from the ‘domestic labour debate’ of the 1970s—then
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Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights. Book Review
November 19, 2020
How many friends and relatives can you buy the same book for as a Christmas present, without getting into trouble for your lack of imagination? Difficult Women has everything – a great and funny writer in Helen Lewis, and a fascinating and page-turning introduction to the history of northern, mainly UK, feminism. Here’s the pitch: ‘Women’s history should not be
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What are we seeing so far on Emergent Agency in Covid? Top insights, plus next steps.
November 18, 2020
Spent an intense two hours last week on a webinar discussing the initial findings, hypotheses etc of our Emergent Agency in a Time of Covid project. We had some great panellists (Laurence Cox, Yogesh Ghore, and Katherine Marshall) on social movements, livelihoods and faith organizations, respectively. I cross examined, Irene Guijt chaired, and a good spread of activists and researchers
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Social Protection in a Time of Covid – 4 takeaways and 4 big gaps from a recent global discussion
November 17, 2020
Larissa Pelham, Oxfam’s Social Protection Adviser, reports back on a 4 day Zoomathon Covid-19 has catapulted social protection into the spotlight. From furloughing to school feeding programmes delivered to homes, 212 states and territories across the world have planned or delivered 1179 social protection interventions in response to the pandemic. It is the backbone support to families and individuals to
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