October 2009
Use this halloween to avert real-life climate... →
Avaaz took out an advertisement timed to coincide with a summit of EU leaders to try to push for support of a climate finance package and set the stage for Copenhagen in December….
West African Seed Alliance to improve incomes of... →
Harnessing Opportunities for Productivity... →
Yarrr, the comedy of the commons →
According to Channel 4 news [Hat tip to WR], Somali piracy has been so successful in disrupting foreign fishing boats that the natural fish stocks in the region are growing! Kenyan…
Did food production in Sub-Saharan Africa grew in... →
Obama Delivers $151M to Clean Technology →
This Tuesday, the Department of Energy disbursed the first federal grants for clean technology in ventures that focus on alternative forms of fuel, the development of high density lithium batteries,…
The Mobile Phone Jirga: Supporting Rule of Law in... →
My friend Colin Rule’s put up this presentation on the use of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) using mobiles in Afghanistan around which he and I had several rounds of email discussion. I…
Strengthening Agricultural Innovation Capacity:... →
Keeping Africa Small →
“…NGO’s mean well, but are they really welcome by the recipients of their charity?…”-Current TV
Romania sends weapons to Colombian insurgents.... →
A recent UN report on arms trafficking has revealed that the Romanian state agency ROMARM has sold weapons to FARC, the main insurgency in Columbia, via the arms dealer Monzer al Kassar….
Food Crisis set to worsen →
from SwRadioAfrica The food crisis that is threatening to leave millions of Zimbabweans once again facing severe hunger in the coming months is set to worsen, as the country’s remaining commercial…
Bill Gates vs the Green lobby →
fromFrontPageMagazine (a right wing US webpage) …Greenpeace has long claimed GM foods increase allergies; however, the World Health Organization – hardly a corporate, capitalist shill – concluded,…
Are You Using People-like-them? →
When a significant event happens to a person, they want information immediately. Not just published information, but real, relevant information. Often times this information does NOT come from your…
Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes... →
By Annie Wilkinson
Growing up in rural Montana and Wyoming here in the US, I was all too familiar with the dominant culture of homophobia—a culture that is not unique to Montana or Wyoming, but…
Weekend Reading →
Three Goodbyes for Chechnya's Witnesses →
Elena Milashina, a spirited young reporter for Russia’s Novaya Gazeta, described the last time she saw her friend, Natalia Estemirova, a history teacher turned human rights investigator in…
Strange Things are Afoot in Papua, Indonesia →
Papua province, Indonesia. It’s the wealthy soil, mountainous region inhabited largely by Melanesians, the western half of the island of New Guinea. Many of us who check out travel books or…
Be the change: A voice for the voiceless, by Susan... →
This afternoon, I fell in love. Not for the first time and certainly not for the last, but there was an almost-instant bond of friendship and responsibility that lasted for four short hours before I…
World Vision Forms New Anti-Malaria Partnership to... →
From The Christian Post: ”International aid agency World Vision and the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) have formed a new partnership to better protect children in four…
Ceasefire Liberia in the News (October) →
By: Ruthie Ackerman
Photo on Flickr by woody1778a
Every month when I do my roundups of what happened on the Ceasefire blog that month I think to myself, “It can’t get much better than…
Peru: A national conversation on abortion and... →
In Peru, a new bill related to women’s health and pregnancy has sparked a national conversation.
The abortion issue in Peru has reemerged due to a bill that has been approved in the Special…
“We learn sitting on the floor…!” →
Pupils whose parents cannot afford chairs and lockers make do with the floor. Photo: GBENRO ADEOYE / 234NEXT.com
This is an image that breaks the heart! Hattip
You can build it. But they still might not come. →
Kevin Costner built the field and got a game going. I think he was lucky.
An anthropologist I know once told me a great story, which may be a rural myth. It was about a remote tribe in…
INEPDitude →
I spotted this on Alanna’s twitter feed: the “International Network for Enabling Poverty Development” or the INEPD charity. It’s obvious a heavy dose of parody (although the site looks…
Can Emotional Intelligence Be Taught? →
Since Daniel Goleman popularized the term “emotional intelligence” (EI), studies have found that high EI is associated with lots of good things, including academic and occupational success,…
This week’s nonprofit fundraising Best Practice in... →
Today we bring you another installment in our weekly series of nonprofit fundraising Best Practices in Action. Each week, we’ll highlight an organization that has done an incredible job of…
Technical announcement →
AF Fellows: Everday Barriers (Part 2 of 3) →
Each year as part of their training in New York, the new class of Acumen Fund fellows is sent out into the city armed only with a $6 metro card, a $5 bill, and their IDs. Their mission is to…
Why don’t we fund more health systems instead of... →
As if we needed any more evidence that centering advocacy and funding around specific diseases was a bad idea, the New York Times reports:
Diarrhea kills 1.5 million young children a year in…
Attention Student Social Entrepreneurs! Win... →
Calling all socially innovative university students! The University of Texas and Dell are looking for college students from around the world who want to improve areas of critical human need through…
links for 2009-10-30 →
World Affairs Journal – The Cosmopolitan Tongue: The Universality of English
John McWhorter makes the case – which he knows is provocative and controversial – that the death of small…
TRC diaspora report released →
The final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s diaspora project has been released. It’s called “A House with Two Rooms.” At 626 pages, you can either read it as…
Bolivia: The Cochabamba Climate Court →
The second of a series of 4 videoblogs, Karen Luyckx, CAFOD’s representative in Bolivia talks from Cochabamba’s Climate Change tribunal, where indigenous leaders gathered in October to hold climate…
Kiva & the illusion of person-to-person giving →
The past couple of weeks have seen drama for Kiva, the successful funder of international person-to-person loans—drama on the blogs, anyway. Bloggers criticized Kiva for misleading donors, of…
Sugar Learning Platform is Big - in Chile →
Sugar was presented in Santiago as part of the Free Software events that were done locally in many parts of the world on October 7-9, on equal footing as, for example, Ubuntu, who were on the very…
OLPC Can Fight Insurgencies with XO Laptops, Not... →
I have been following the current debate about sending troops to Afghanistan. I have no idea of how many troops are needed but in our rush to stop the violence, we should not forget that the…
Two election support network members arrested →
from SWRadioAfrica …The Zimbabwe Election Support Network staff members, Thulani Ndhlovu and Ndodhana Ndhlovu, were arrested on Wednesday evening in Hwange’s Dete area, for conducting a public…
Kenya video: Drought is worst in living memory →
For hundreds of years, Maasai herders have roamed with their cows in search of pasture and water, a lifestyle uniquely adapted to dry lands. But the current drought is the worst in living memory –…
Confronting Arab Prejuduce →
In Africa Council:
Libyan Leader Ghadaffi’s “king of kings” title is an insult to our African traditions. Before shouting about African unity let Gaddaffi first address the perpetual
100 indicators of well-being or just one? Stiglitz... →
The OECD conference I’ve been attending is winding down. Lots of banquets, but not much booze, so I never had to try the hotel’s tempting room service item ‘outer leaves of cabbage broth to…
Announcement: Dialogue between Europe and its... →
Academic sins →
I’ve been reading up on journal articles on birth order in preparation for a DPhil paper. I ran across two (published!) papers that both committed deep and unforgivable sins. See if you can spot…
conference on Ghana's Comprehensive African... →
UN official on torture denied entry into Zim →
from the ZimbabweMail Harare - Robert Mugabe’s rogue Justice minister who claims to have invited UN rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak to the country has accused the UN official of trying to sow…
A better life – but what cost? →
By Martina Liebsch, Caritas Internationalis migration advocacy officer
Lucie Detsi wanted to study. She wanted a better life. She left Cameroon for Italy, where she worked for families as a domestic…
Speaking of Cars… →
Speaking of cars, some things I have observed about cars and driving. They may or may not generalize:
1. When your project owns the cars, your drivers will be happy, enthusiastic types who…
How Wartime Killers Cover Tracks →
Outside Granada, Spain, this week, a forensics team, which represents the families of leftist fighters and sympathizers who disappeared in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, dug into a mass…
Big Warm-up →
Land’s End is sponsoring this year the Big Boston Warm-Up, an effort to make the season warmer for the homeless people in the Boston area. Collecting one coat at a time (donated at Sears), but…
Taliban moves to terrorise guests in suicide... →
On Oct 28th it was reported that The Taliban struck in Kabul, friends that we know living there were amazed what a well operated action it was! The attackers, clad in suicide vests and armed with…
Where Are the iParticipants? →
About a week ago, I shared some of my high level thoughts about the state of online volunteer matching platforms. I expressed that online platforms for “good” need to be…