Have you heard about the Global Wellness Center?

This site was developed to enable volunteers, development/aid workers and global humanitarians to access supportive, empowerment-based counseling from any corner of the globe.

Transitioning to a new environment, adjusting to a new culture and…

A lot of people think pretty deep thoughts about the nexus of humanitarian aid and social media. I’m not one of them. Nevertheless, I started blogging and tweeting about international development and humanitarian aid a couple of years ago. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

1. Applied Creativity

I don’t know if creativity is a finite thing, but I do know that once I started blogging and tweeting, I began using a greater measure of it for things of questionable value.…

First published on http://hawk-emptysky.blogspot.com

The headquarters of the Okapi Wildlife Reserve in Epulu, DRC was attacked over the weekend and buildings burnt, guards killed, okapis eaten, local people displaced. I want to do something. I want to take action. I want to make this right, this one thing, to make it better. I want to spend my days running campaigns. I want to go there…

Originally posted on UpLook

Wicked problems have these features: It is hard to say what the problem is, to define it clearly or to tell where it stops and starts. There is no “right” way to view the problem, no definitive formulation. There are many stakeholders, all with their own frames, which they tend to…

Long-haul international flights are a great opportunity to catch up on action adventure movies I’d never bother seeing in the U.S. On my flight from Johannesburg on Friday night, I watched In Time, a Justin Timberlake as Robin Hood sci-fi film in which time replaces money as the world’s currency and presents just as many challenges to the have and have-nots.

This got me thinking about the currencies of international aid. On this trip,…

My blog Staying for Tea celebrates its two-year anniversary this month. It also just reached a milestone of 25,000 page views from 118 countries. Seemed like a good occasion to release a 'greatest hits' compilation. Hope you enjoy.

We see it in almost every relief response: those life-saving NFI kits, food parcels (I don’t know why we insist on calling them “food baskets”), tarpaulins, jerry-cans, shoes, or whatever else… that we’d gone to a lot of trouble to distribute directly to refugees or survivors end up for sale in local markets.

We usually just take this for granted as one of those things that always seems to happen. In some cases (Tsunamiland…

Recently in Bangladesh, some agricultural farmers showed their agitation against the government by through tons of paddy in the main road of capital city. The cause of their grief was that, they couldn’t make profit by selling paddy due to the high production costs and also excess production of paddy in this year. In last winter some vegetable farmers also through tons of tomato in the roads of several cities of Bangladesh due to same cause. When supplies of paddy exceed the demand then the…

Today is World Refugee Day! Take a look at some of the key points from UNHCR's recently released Global Trends Report: http://globaleducationdevelopment.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/overview-unhcr-global-trends-2011.html

We all know there are aid donors and international funding partners out there that want to change “business as usual” in development (or at least people inside those institutions that do). We also all know that for various reasons, they’re not moving quick enough for those working on the ground.

New donors could come in and fill the gaps. But more importantly, we need a new kind of donor, whether they are recent to the scene or not.

The organizations that I see doing…

Not so long ago a very close aid worker friend of mine confided that she was contemplating leaving the aid industry. Her reason: too many of her friends had died in the line of duty. She didn’t want to have that happen again. Her number was higher than mine, but then even one is already too many.

A little less long ago some grad student found me – I’m not sure how, exactly – and asked if I’d participate in a study on PTSD among humanitarian workers. I agreed. Give the younger ones a…

http://globaleducationdevelopment.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/has-time-come-for-freely-available.html

This post first appeared on the original (blogspot) version of Tales From the Hood (now closed), on 21 October, 2008. Reposting for posterity.

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Confusion & Delay

There is nothing quite like being a parent.

I have ridden motorcycles in shorts, sometimes with no helmet, and I have crashed twice – once into a BMW; I…

At present, production and selling of drug (e.g. YABA, PETHIDINE, HEROIN, GANJA (Hemp), PHENSEDYL etc) is a very profitable business in this world. Many people in all over the world involve with this business by investing money as a producer, manufacturer and seller of those harmful drugs. By this…

Originally posted on UpLook

Source: 24expo via Stephanie on Pinterest[/caption]

I have recently been writing reports on the state of freedom of expression in four countries in the Horn of Africa:…

Job transitions are weird and somewhat stressful times for people no matter what kind of work they do, but I’m beginning to think that global humanitarian and development professionals may have it worse than most. On top of the usual uncertainty and stress of changing jobs, the results of our interviews may mean that we may end up in any one of several different countries,…

hello to all,

I was recently confronted to the issue of a potential ngo employer considering itself (and all aid agencies) as the "substitute for the State" in a certain country in Africa who is evaluated as a "ghost state".

I am wondering how concepts such as general development (including governance), partnerships and also negotiation, could be influended by this claim/observation.

I generally think the State in Africa should have a greater role, if only becasue it is…

The best piece of advice I ever received was from a professor in grad school who told us that we as aid workers might never be able to unequivocally determine if we are doing things right. However she assured us that if we weren't questioning ourselves, we most certainly were doing things wrong.

Along with the results frameworks and donor pressures that dictate our daily work, our own personal reflection is also a necessary and vital tool in making our role as…