No excerpt

I’m doing some work for the UN, putting together a training package on ‘humanitarian influencing’. As you might expect, I’m advocating the use of PEA/context analysis, power analysis etc – see attached slides for my basic narrative. But when it comes to case studies, I am flummoxed. There are lots of examples in other bits of the aid jungle, especially

Regular FP2P readers will know by now that I’ve been following Myanmar quite a lot, and some of the conversations have been both interesting and of much broader relevance. Recently I had a call with some researchers who adapted governance diaries work first to the pandemic, and then to the coup. Diaries involve local researchers returning to the same individuals

Reporting. Any resemblance to the aid sector is purely accidental. The UK’s leading (or at least biggest) supermarket, Tesco, has published new commitments on living wages for its banana producers as well as a gender target as part of the implementation of their gender strategy. Top influencing from Oxfam private sector team and allies. UK aid budget gets de facto

No excerpt

In their final instalment on Oxfam’s Inspiring Radically Better Futures project, Irene Guijt and Ruth Mayne summarize the main findings. We thank the inspired, courageous and determined people involved in the Inspiring Better Futures case studies who have shown that radically better futures are within reach. Many people around the world have generously given their time and contributed to the

In their second post on Oxfam’s Inspiring Futures project, Irene Guijt and Ruth Mayne nerd out on the methodology. If hope is stronger when anchored in evidence, what does it take to create that evidence base? There were plenty of head scratching moments involved in answering our main question: What evidence exists that transformative and inclusive change at scale is

Irene Guijt and Ruth Mayne introduce ‘Inspiring Radically Better Futures’, a new Oxfam research programme. With COP26 looming, everyone is hoping again. We hope that world leaders will make the bold decisions needed to reduce the scale of inevitable climate change. But what Sarah Palin once memorably called ‘that hopey changey stuff’ has gotten a hard rap recently. Take Greta

The political economy of UK aid ht Lee Crawfurd James Putzel and I have been having fun organizing the LSE’s Friday afternoon lecture series, ‘Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking and Practice’. Ha-Joon Chang was brilliant on ‘the political economy of Parasite (the movie)’ with the Squid Game thrown in. Take your pick from student write-ups, podcast or Youtube. This

No excerpt

Building on Elrha’s recent learning paper about the role of evidence in scaling humanitarian innovations, Abigail Taylor outlines how Make Music Matter has used evidence to enable adoption of its innovative Healing in Harmony programme… Proving that a new idea or approach works is, sadly, not enough to ensure it is widely picked up. Innovators must follow up research activities

Women, Voice and Power, Oxfam’s new paper on ‘transformative feminist leadership’ exemplifies why I love working for NGOs, but also why it can get a bit irksome, especially if you’re a wordsmith. Let’s start with the good stuff. The 7 page Exec Sum (the full report weighs in at 45 pages) is stuffed full with great literature summaries, case studies,