I am interested in the economic side of things? The effectiveness of policy side of things? Would being a type of policy adviser be good for me???
honours consideration: management/governance and effectiveness…
Potential employees Aidwatch.org.au
_________
________
could I be in a position of NGO effectiveness auditor? looking at evaluation and monitoring?
_______
useful link containing the different types of aid effectiveness initiatives: http://www.ngoforum.org.kh/index.php/en/aid-effectiveness
http://developmentcrossroads.com/about-shana/
Wednesday, 27 November 2013
Tuesday, 12 November 2013
Discussion on altruism and self-care in aidwork
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09700161.2012.698133
Great references to other books I would like to read, discussion on fundamental issue aid workers/development workers must feel about their work and their own level of lifestyle (i.e., how comfortable a life they want to be making whilst trying to reduce poverty and improve the lives of beneficiaries).
Great references to other books I would like to read, discussion on fundamental issue aid workers/development workers must feel about their work and their own level of lifestyle (i.e., how comfortable a life they want to be making whilst trying to reduce poverty and improve the lives of beneficiaries).
Tuesday, 5 November 2013
Aid for Africa? No thanks. TED Talk
http://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_mwenda_takes_a_new_look_at_africa.html
The Dark Side of Foreign Aid
http://thediplomat.com/asean-beat/2013/11/05/the-dark-side-of-foreign-aid/
One particularly fascinating paragraph: "However, the impact from aid has not been proportionate to the amount of money donated. Foreign aid’s biggest downside is that no clear, effective system has been put in place to hold aid recipients and their governments accountable for resources illegally taken from public sector coffers – a long-standing, and still very present, trend from Asia to Africa to Latin America/Caribbean to Europe. Unfortunately, the absence of that system reinforces social inequities and perpetuates cycles of political abuse that has led to a sophisticated new form of authoritarianism – one that empowers the elite few, while keeping a majority of people in abject poverty."
One particularly fascinating paragraph: "However, the impact from aid has not been proportionate to the amount of money donated. Foreign aid’s biggest downside is that no clear, effective system has been put in place to hold aid recipients and their governments accountable for resources illegally taken from public sector coffers – a long-standing, and still very present, trend from Asia to Africa to Latin America/Caribbean to Europe. Unfortunately, the absence of that system reinforces social inequities and perpetuates cycles of political abuse that has led to a sophisticated new form of authoritarianism – one that empowers the elite few, while keeping a majority of people in abject poverty."
Sunday, 20 October 2013
Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures); True Stories From A War Zone
"There seems nothing false about war. Loyalties are strong. The enemy is known. There are none of the subtleties and nuances of ordinary life; you're at the core of every feeling. Nothing else matters but to stay alive. And that's how I want to feel."
_____________
Andrew talking about the evacuation from Haiti.
"We just showed Haitians that our lives are more valuable than theirs. The logic of the mission was ours, not theirs, and so is the logic of our retreat. "Tell us the truth and we'll seek justice" was our idea. "It's too dangerous and we must evacuate" is our privilege. Neither applies with the Haitians. A ship with soldiers arrives at the dock and exits the dock. Haitians have no exit."
______________
Andrew talking about the UN standing by and doing nothing in Bosnia (and Rwanda)
"If blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, run. Or else get weapons. Your lives are worth so much less than theirs. I learned that the day we were evacuated from Haiti".
_______________
Ken.
"I'm not ready to let the youthful part of myself go yet. If maturity means becoming a cynic, if you have to kill the part of yourself that is naïve and romantic and idealistic - the part of yourself you treasure most - to claim maturity, is it not better to die young but with your humanity intact? If everyone resigns themselves to cynicism, isn't that exactly how vulnerable millions end up dead?"
_____________
Andrew talking about the evacuation from Haiti.
"We just showed Haitians that our lives are more valuable than theirs. The logic of the mission was ours, not theirs, and so is the logic of our retreat. "Tell us the truth and we'll seek justice" was our idea. "It's too dangerous and we must evacuate" is our privilege. Neither applies with the Haitians. A ship with soldiers arrives at the dock and exits the dock. Haitians have no exit."
______________
Andrew talking about the UN standing by and doing nothing in Bosnia (and Rwanda)
"If blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, run. Or else get weapons. Your lives are worth so much less than theirs. I learned that the day we were evacuated from Haiti".
_______________
Ken.
"I'm not ready to let the youthful part of myself go yet. If maturity means becoming a cynic, if you have to kill the part of yourself that is naïve and romantic and idealistic - the part of yourself you treasure most - to claim maturity, is it not better to die young but with your humanity intact? If everyone resigns themselves to cynicism, isn't that exactly how vulnerable millions end up dead?"
Friday, 11 October 2013
"Emma's War" an autobiography by Deborah Scroggins
Biography of a British aid worker in Sudan, marries a local warlord.
"...at the same time, he was engaged in writing a doctoral dissertation arguing that the West had turned refugee aid into a self-perpetuating industry that often did more harm than good in Sudan."
___________________
"Zaroug and the others were forever complaining about the arrogant young foreigners who ran so many of the refugee programmes. Just as the Victorians in the nineteenth century trusted Gordon and Baker more than the Egyptians to carry out their anti-slavery agenda in Sudan, so twentieth century North Americans and Europeans trusted their own nationals more than Africans to carry out their schemes for African improvement. Frustrated by what they perceived as the inefficiency and corruption of African governments, they chanelled an increasing amount of their aid through private, non-governmental organisations such as World Vision and Oxfam. The overseas aid workers were often hired not for their knowledge of Africa but for their familiarity with Western ideas about what should be done for Africa. In the 1980s that meant concepts such as women's rights and 'grassroots development'".
____________________
"I've just got to get back there," she [Emma] moaned, seeming not to understand that it was against the unspoken rules of aid to admit that all one really wanted was to get away from home".
____________________
Talking about Operation Lifeline's base camp at Lokichoggio.
"Loki in 1989 was not yet the 'five-star dude ranch, complete with a swimming pool and restaurant' that foreign reporters would mock a decade later. Visitors at Loki slept in army tents on camp beds. They took showers outside in sun-warmed water and ate in a communal mess hall. From the WEstern point of view, they were still roughing it. But that was not how the Sudanese saw it. An SPLA commander who visited Loki that year later described it to the human rights group African Rights. "When I saw the UN compound in Loki, it was amazing,', the commander said. 'When people tlak about Heaven... Heaven is where you enjoy life... When you want to drink something cold, you go for it. When you want to drink something hot, you go for it. Some people are enjoying Heaven. There are people who are enjoying Heaven. There are people who are enjoying our war in southern Sudan, and I was sorry for that because people are dying in the hundreds'. Southern Sudanese like this commander assumed that relief workers like Emma were in it for the money; they often remarked that such people must be failures in their societies to want to come to Sudan".
_____________________
"The supposedly neutral aid workers did not seem much better to her; she thought hte ugliness of the power realities tarnished everyone. The tendency of the Westerners to see themselves as 'fighting evil' offended her. 'We were all there to advance our careers,' she said. 'I never saw anybody sacrifice anything. Everyone benefited somehow.'. And that was what made it so upsetting. As the Sudanese put it, they were all 'eating' from the situation that kept the boys penned up in the camp across the river from Riek and Emma"."
_____________________
"Was the US 'Intervasion', as journalists called it, a prelude to a UN takeover of Somalia? If so, wasn't that just another name for colonialism? Had we come full circle, back to the point 100 years earlier when Britain had justified its conquest of places like Sudan and Somalia by arguing that they were saving the inhabitants from famine and slavery?".
"This talk about humanitarian assistance is completely misplaced if it takes place in a political vacuum... Unless this is accompanied with a political reconciliation, you have no chance of creating the conditions to stop the cycle of hunger and greed and destructiveness'."
____________________
"I went to the office and read Emma's obituary in The Times. It referred to her, inevitably, as a 'British aid worker'.
I flung down the paper with irritation. At the time of her death it had been two years since Emma had been employed by an aid agency. But the clichés of mercy are so powerful that it was perhaps beyond the obituarist's imagination to see her as anything but a humanitarian. She was British; she was in a poor and angry part of Africa; therefore she must be helping. I thought of some of the things Emma was called in Sudan: First Lady-in-Waiting; concubine; spy; heroine. To label her an aid worker seemed another example of the West's inexcusable narcissism: the lazy refusal to see beyond our salvation fantasies and look at Africa and ourselves for what we are. There seemed to be no escape from this hall of mirrors."
___________________
The noble cause, the great saving illusion.
"...at the same time, he was engaged in writing a doctoral dissertation arguing that the West had turned refugee aid into a self-perpetuating industry that often did more harm than good in Sudan."
___________________
"Zaroug and the others were forever complaining about the arrogant young foreigners who ran so many of the refugee programmes. Just as the Victorians in the nineteenth century trusted Gordon and Baker more than the Egyptians to carry out their anti-slavery agenda in Sudan, so twentieth century North Americans and Europeans trusted their own nationals more than Africans to carry out their schemes for African improvement. Frustrated by what they perceived as the inefficiency and corruption of African governments, they chanelled an increasing amount of their aid through private, non-governmental organisations such as World Vision and Oxfam. The overseas aid workers were often hired not for their knowledge of Africa but for their familiarity with Western ideas about what should be done for Africa. In the 1980s that meant concepts such as women's rights and 'grassroots development'".
____________________
"I've just got to get back there," she [Emma] moaned, seeming not to understand that it was against the unspoken rules of aid to admit that all one really wanted was to get away from home".
____________________
Talking about Operation Lifeline's base camp at Lokichoggio.
"Loki in 1989 was not yet the 'five-star dude ranch, complete with a swimming pool and restaurant' that foreign reporters would mock a decade later. Visitors at Loki slept in army tents on camp beds. They took showers outside in sun-warmed water and ate in a communal mess hall. From the WEstern point of view, they were still roughing it. But that was not how the Sudanese saw it. An SPLA commander who visited Loki that year later described it to the human rights group African Rights. "When I saw the UN compound in Loki, it was amazing,', the commander said. 'When people tlak about Heaven... Heaven is where you enjoy life... When you want to drink something cold, you go for it. When you want to drink something hot, you go for it. Some people are enjoying Heaven. There are people who are enjoying Heaven. There are people who are enjoying our war in southern Sudan, and I was sorry for that because people are dying in the hundreds'. Southern Sudanese like this commander assumed that relief workers like Emma were in it for the money; they often remarked that such people must be failures in their societies to want to come to Sudan".
_____________________
"The supposedly neutral aid workers did not seem much better to her; she thought hte ugliness of the power realities tarnished everyone. The tendency of the Westerners to see themselves as 'fighting evil' offended her. 'We were all there to advance our careers,' she said. 'I never saw anybody sacrifice anything. Everyone benefited somehow.'. And that was what made it so upsetting. As the Sudanese put it, they were all 'eating' from the situation that kept the boys penned up in the camp across the river from Riek and Emma"."
_____________________
"Was the US 'Intervasion', as journalists called it, a prelude to a UN takeover of Somalia? If so, wasn't that just another name for colonialism? Had we come full circle, back to the point 100 years earlier when Britain had justified its conquest of places like Sudan and Somalia by arguing that they were saving the inhabitants from famine and slavery?".
"This talk about humanitarian assistance is completely misplaced if it takes place in a political vacuum... Unless this is accompanied with a political reconciliation, you have no chance of creating the conditions to stop the cycle of hunger and greed and destructiveness'."
____________________
"I went to the office and read Emma's obituary in The Times. It referred to her, inevitably, as a 'British aid worker'.
I flung down the paper with irritation. At the time of her death it had been two years since Emma had been employed by an aid agency. But the clichés of mercy are so powerful that it was perhaps beyond the obituarist's imagination to see her as anything but a humanitarian. She was British; she was in a poor and angry part of Africa; therefore she must be helping. I thought of some of the things Emma was called in Sudan: First Lady-in-Waiting; concubine; spy; heroine. To label her an aid worker seemed another example of the West's inexcusable narcissism: the lazy refusal to see beyond our salvation fantasies and look at Africa and ourselves for what we are. There seemed to be no escape from this hall of mirrors."
___________________
The noble cause, the great saving illusion.
Monday, 30 September 2013
Banker To The Poor, autobiography of Muhammad Yunus
Muhammad Yunus, Bangladeshi founder of the micro-credit lending institution the Grameen Bank. Inspired to lift those in extreme poverty out of it by providing the capital for entrepreneurship and thus self-sustainability.
Here are some quotes and perspectives from the autobiography that I'd like to keep hold of.
______
Talking about the impact of the loan on a woman who receives it and runs a successful business on the loan:
"When the first-time borrower pays back her first installment, there is enormous excitement because she has proved to herself she can earn the money to pay it. Then the second installment, then the third. It is an exciting experience for her. It is the excitement of discovering the worth of her own ability, and this excitement seizes her; it is palpable and contagious to anyone who meets her or talks to her. She discovers that she is more than what everybody said she was. She has something inside of her that she never knew she had.
The Grameen loan is not simply cash, it becomes a kind of ticket to self-discovery and self-exploration. The borrower begins to explore her potential, to discover the creativity she has inside her."
_________
"The borrowers of commerical banks are all living well above the poverty line. Our borrowers are all initially below the poverty line. We would like our borrowers to rise above the poverty line. Grameen has decided that, in our national context at least, rising above the poverty line in rural Bangladesh means meeting the following criteria:
-the household must have a rain-proof house, a sanitary toilet, clean drinking water, the ability to repay 300 taka ($8) a week
-all school-age children must be in school
-the entire household must eat three meals a day and must have medical checkups"
_______
"...Grameen is only trying to liberate people from the tyranny of poverty and the injustice of a life without hope."
_______
"...Credit is not simply an income-generating tool, it is a powerful weapon for social change, a way to give people new meaning in their lives."
_______
"Poverty is not created by the poor, it is created by the structures of society, and policies pursued by society. Change the structure as we are doing in Bangladesh, and you will see the poor change their lives."
______
"Somehow we have persuaded ourselves that capitalist economy must be fuelled only by greed. This has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Only the profit-maximisers get to play in the market-place and try their luck. People who are not excited about profit-aking stay way from it, condemn it and keep searching for alternatives.
We can condemn the private sector for all its mistakes, but we cannot justify why we ourselves are not trying to change things, not trying to make things better by participating in it. The private sector, unlike the government, is open to everyone, even to those who are not interested in making profit.
The challenge I set before anyone who condemns private-sector business is this: if you are a socially conscious person, why don't you run your business in a way that will help achieve social objectives?"
_______
"I am proposing that we replace the narrow profit maximisation principle with a generalised principle - an entrepreneur who maximises a bundle consisting of two components: a) profit and b) social returns, subject to the condition that profit cannot be negative."
______
"To me changing the quality of life of the bottom 50 per cent of the population is the essence of development. To be more rigorous, I would efine developmetn by focusing on the quality of life of the lower 25 per cent of the population."
______
"Of course, investing in roads ,motorways, power plants, airports turns on the engine in the forward first-class carriages, those are the fanciest and richest ones, and it enhances the train's engine capacity by many fold; but whether it can help ignite or enhance the capacity of the engines in subsequent carriages, in all other layers and strata of society (also called 'the trickle-down effect'), remains uncertain."
______
"...I firmly believe that all human beings have an innate skill. I call it the survival skill. The fact that the poor are alive is clear proof of their ability. They do not need us to tech them how to survive, they already know this. So rather than waste our time teaching them new skills, we decided to make maximum use of their existing skills. Giving the poor access to credit allows them to immediately to put into practice the skills they already know - to weave, husk rice paddy, raise cows, peddle a rickshaw. And the cash they earn is then a tool, a key that unlocks a host of other abilities, a key to explore one's own potential."
______
"Government decision-makers, many NGOs and international consultants start the poverty alleviation work by launching a very elaborate training programme. This may be explained in three ways: first they start with the assumption that people are poor because they lack skills. If they can acquire a skill, they will, of course, no longer remain poor. Second, they start with training because this perpetuates their own interests - more jobs with a big budget for themselves without the responsibility of having to produce any concrete results. You can show you are doing a great deal without really doing anything. Third, they don't know what else can be done.
A huge industry has evolved worldwide, thanks to aid-flow and welfare budgets, for the sole purpose of providing training. Experts on poverty alleviation keep on insisting that training is absolutely vital for the poor t move up the economic ladder. They claim this is a prerequisite.
But if you go out into the real world you cannot miss seeing that the poor are poor not because they are untrained, or illiterate, they are poor because they cannot retain the returns of their labour. The reason for this is obvious - they have no control over capital, and it is the ability to control capital which calls the tune. Profit is unashamedly biased towards capital. The poor work for the benefit of someone who controls the productive assets.
Why can't the poor control any capital? Because they do not inherit any capital or credit, nor does anybody give them access to capital, because we have been made to believe that the poor are not to be trusted with credit - they are not creditworthy. But are banks people-worthy?"
______
"...the micro-credit movement which is built around and for and with money, ironically, at is at its heart, at its deepest root, not about money at all. It is about helping each person achieve his or her fullest potential. It is not about cash capital, but about human capital. Money is merely a tool that helps unlock human dreams and helps even the poorest and most unfortunate people on this planet achieve dignity, respect, and meaning in their lives."
______
"Charity is no solution to poverty. Charity only perpetuates poverty by taking the initiative away from the poor. Charity allows us to go ahead with our own lives without worrying about those of other people. Our conscious is adequately appeased by charity.
But the real issue is creating a level playing-field for everybody, giving every human being a fair and equal chance."
Here are some quotes and perspectives from the autobiography that I'd like to keep hold of.
______
Talking about the impact of the loan on a woman who receives it and runs a successful business on the loan:
"When the first-time borrower pays back her first installment, there is enormous excitement because she has proved to herself she can earn the money to pay it. Then the second installment, then the third. It is an exciting experience for her. It is the excitement of discovering the worth of her own ability, and this excitement seizes her; it is palpable and contagious to anyone who meets her or talks to her. She discovers that she is more than what everybody said she was. She has something inside of her that she never knew she had.
The Grameen loan is not simply cash, it becomes a kind of ticket to self-discovery and self-exploration. The borrower begins to explore her potential, to discover the creativity she has inside her."
_________
"The borrowers of commerical banks are all living well above the poverty line. Our borrowers are all initially below the poverty line. We would like our borrowers to rise above the poverty line. Grameen has decided that, in our national context at least, rising above the poverty line in rural Bangladesh means meeting the following criteria:
-the household must have a rain-proof house, a sanitary toilet, clean drinking water, the ability to repay 300 taka ($8) a week
-all school-age children must be in school
-the entire household must eat three meals a day and must have medical checkups"
_______
"...Grameen is only trying to liberate people from the tyranny of poverty and the injustice of a life without hope."
_______
"...Credit is not simply an income-generating tool, it is a powerful weapon for social change, a way to give people new meaning in their lives."
_______
"Poverty is not created by the poor, it is created by the structures of society, and policies pursued by society. Change the structure as we are doing in Bangladesh, and you will see the poor change their lives."
______
"Somehow we have persuaded ourselves that capitalist economy must be fuelled only by greed. This has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Only the profit-maximisers get to play in the market-place and try their luck. People who are not excited about profit-aking stay way from it, condemn it and keep searching for alternatives.
We can condemn the private sector for all its mistakes, but we cannot justify why we ourselves are not trying to change things, not trying to make things better by participating in it. The private sector, unlike the government, is open to everyone, even to those who are not interested in making profit.
The challenge I set before anyone who condemns private-sector business is this: if you are a socially conscious person, why don't you run your business in a way that will help achieve social objectives?"
_______
"I am proposing that we replace the narrow profit maximisation principle with a generalised principle - an entrepreneur who maximises a bundle consisting of two components: a) profit and b) social returns, subject to the condition that profit cannot be negative."
______
"To me changing the quality of life of the bottom 50 per cent of the population is the essence of development. To be more rigorous, I would efine developmetn by focusing on the quality of life of the lower 25 per cent of the population."
______
"Of course, investing in roads ,motorways, power plants, airports turns on the engine in the forward first-class carriages, those are the fanciest and richest ones, and it enhances the train's engine capacity by many fold; but whether it can help ignite or enhance the capacity of the engines in subsequent carriages, in all other layers and strata of society (also called 'the trickle-down effect'), remains uncertain."
______
"...I firmly believe that all human beings have an innate skill. I call it the survival skill. The fact that the poor are alive is clear proof of their ability. They do not need us to tech them how to survive, they already know this. So rather than waste our time teaching them new skills, we decided to make maximum use of their existing skills. Giving the poor access to credit allows them to immediately to put into practice the skills they already know - to weave, husk rice paddy, raise cows, peddle a rickshaw. And the cash they earn is then a tool, a key that unlocks a host of other abilities, a key to explore one's own potential."
______
"Government decision-makers, many NGOs and international consultants start the poverty alleviation work by launching a very elaborate training programme. This may be explained in three ways: first they start with the assumption that people are poor because they lack skills. If they can acquire a skill, they will, of course, no longer remain poor. Second, they start with training because this perpetuates their own interests - more jobs with a big budget for themselves without the responsibility of having to produce any concrete results. You can show you are doing a great deal without really doing anything. Third, they don't know what else can be done.
A huge industry has evolved worldwide, thanks to aid-flow and welfare budgets, for the sole purpose of providing training. Experts on poverty alleviation keep on insisting that training is absolutely vital for the poor t move up the economic ladder. They claim this is a prerequisite.
But if you go out into the real world you cannot miss seeing that the poor are poor not because they are untrained, or illiterate, they are poor because they cannot retain the returns of their labour. The reason for this is obvious - they have no control over capital, and it is the ability to control capital which calls the tune. Profit is unashamedly biased towards capital. The poor work for the benefit of someone who controls the productive assets.
Why can't the poor control any capital? Because they do not inherit any capital or credit, nor does anybody give them access to capital, because we have been made to believe that the poor are not to be trusted with credit - they are not creditworthy. But are banks people-worthy?"
______
"...the micro-credit movement which is built around and for and with money, ironically, at is at its heart, at its deepest root, not about money at all. It is about helping each person achieve his or her fullest potential. It is not about cash capital, but about human capital. Money is merely a tool that helps unlock human dreams and helps even the poorest and most unfortunate people on this planet achieve dignity, respect, and meaning in their lives."
______
"Charity is no solution to poverty. Charity only perpetuates poverty by taking the initiative away from the poor. Charity allows us to go ahead with our own lives without worrying about those of other people. Our conscious is adequately appeased by charity.
But the real issue is creating a level playing-field for everybody, giving every human being a fair and equal chance."
Monday, 23 September 2013
Okay all devt blogs will go here!
After posting on my Jessica au Cambodge blog I realised it's better to keep the travel stuff and the international development learnings/reflections/readings/thoughts separate !! So this will from now on contain all my thoughts on development!
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