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Your organisation isn’t going to help you. Help yourself.
A guest post by Weh Yeoh. Generally speaking, it doesn’t matter how large or how small the organisation you work for is. If you work in aid and development, it’s up to you to look after yourself. Sure,...
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6 ways to keep your nonprofit spark lit
This is a guest post by Gboyinde Onijala, the fifth in a series of seven blog posts from my International Development Communications students at Georgetown University’s Public Relations and Corporate...
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What happens when the crisis dries up?
Unkonda Rasheda Sawyer blogs at internationalesawyer.wordpress.com. I started working for Plan International in Burkina Faso in 2012 at the exact moment that the crisis in Mali (which shares a close...
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4 ways to survive (and enjoy!) your next leave
A guest blog by Marco Yuri Jiménez. As I am writing this, I am riding a train crossing the Alps between Austria and Italy. I have been in three countries in about ten hours. I have been in six...
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For the disruptors
Here’s to the ones who ask “why” openly in meetings because they just can’t tolerate the façade of “doing good.” Here’s to the ones who ask “why” and are peppered with reactionary questions that reveal...
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How NOT to respond to bad press: Thoughts for my fellow aid workers (and...
A related version also appears on IDEX’s blog. During my stint at the American Red Cross, I met many hard-working, smart, committed, and kind people – people whom I have now seen malign the...
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How TO respond to bad press: Thoughts from a former colleague
A guest post by Vanessa Deering* On “How NOT to respond to bad press” I think you make many valid points and I wholeheartedly agree that as an industry we should avail ourselves to a more authentic...
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White supremacy, black liberation, and global development: The conversations...
Below all of the talk of “evidence-based approaches” and “taking interventions to scale,” there is an undercurrent of disquiet. It happens when “local partners’ capacity” is maligned. It happens when...
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Ideas that never made it to the page
Here’s a list of the blog posts I didn’t write over the last year or so. The ideas were there, but the time and energy just were not. Extractive partnerships in the aid sector There’s real life, and...
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Actually, it was my capacity that needed to be built
“Capacity building” has been in every job description or programmatic strategy of every international aid and philanthropic organization with which I’ve worked over the past 15 years. In some form or...
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Confessions of a recovering neocolonialist (reprise)
Harare, 2002. The word came. Cash is in the banks. The three colleagues I was standing near at the moment the news came and I quickly jumped in the car. We had to get downtown to Standard Chartered as...
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Happy Halloween!
Frustrated with organizational politics, policies, or processes this Halloween? Here’s a selection of how-matters.org posts to let you know you’re not alone, that you can stand up for what’s right, and...
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An antidote to “he who must not be named”
A guest post by Vanessa Deering 17 buses, 12 planes, 7 boats, 5 trains. 11 countries. Over the past four months, my travel in Europe has provided me with space for pause after years in the...
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Did I…?
There are years that ask questions, and years that answer. ~Zora Neale Hurston This holiday break is a welcome change from a whirlwind year of both questions and answers for me. So I’m sharing the...
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My struggles with self care
This is possibly one of the most personal things I have ever written for how-matters.org. Sometimes…often…it’s hard to choose me. It’s much easier to focus on getting things done at work. How many...
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A new kind of donor: 4 things they do differently
We all know there are aid donors and international funding partners out there that want to change “business as usual,” to challenge the terms of global development. (Or at least people inside those...
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Does aid need a 12-step program?
With all the hype around the World Humanitarian Summit this week, it seemed like a good time to reprise this post from 2012. *** “Let go and let God.” It’s a mantra of Alcoholics Anonymous. I’m...
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On whose shoulders?
“On whose shoulders do you stand?” This was a question asked of me on Friday. My honest reply was that it is a question I have been grappling with quite a lot lately, post-U.S. election. Is it those...
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The first assumption
Dear do-gooders of all shapes, sizes, creeds, and levels of “experience” (that means you too, professional aid workers), Whatever you are doing to make a difference in someone else’s life in the Global...
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The ego (’cause we all have one)
Yesterday was my church’s 500th celebration of institutional rebellion. While some now question whether Martin Luther nailed anything to the door, what I don’t question is my own roots as a reformer....
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