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What makes a thought leader?

I’ve been called a “thought leader” lately. It’s a lot better than some other things I’ve been called in my life, but still, it’s a label I’ve been trying to understand—so much so that I facilitated a...

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How do you tell a compelling story about people in need that doesn’t simplify...

I use my How Matters YouTube channel to highlight portrayals of international assistance that inspire more nuanced conversations about the politics of global development and international aid. Frankly...

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Busan and a Beatle

Busan makes me think about George Harrison. His song, “Got My Mind Set On You,” was playing on the van radio after my first trip to the World Bank in graduate school. At the time, I remember entreating...

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Thoughtful Conversations & Sideways Approaches: The Barefoot Guide Connection

Are there alternatives to the cynicism and disillusionment that pervades in so many organizations that are working towards ‘development’? Where are the people who are interested in creating more...

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13 thoughts for aid in 2013

As I was sitting in a year-end retreat, I started jotting down this list of things that the development aid world could use more of in 2013. I offer it as some food for thought for the year ahead. Aid...

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“I am a drum major for justice.”

Listening at the taping of Vision for a New America: A Future Without Poverty last week (airing this week on PBS in the U.S.), I was reminded of just how much wisdom the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr....

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Not your usual listening exercise: 6000 people’s perceptions of aid delivery

Guest post by Mike Keller, a self-described aid agnostic. When a friend recently pointed my attention to Time to Listen: Hearing People on the Receiving End of International Aid, a “book” by an...

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The Power of No

Imagine not being able to turn away from a problem that you see in this world. You are compelled by a sense of responsibility, passion, and the audacity to believe that you can do something about that...

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Listening to local leaders: Just more data points?

I was excited to click on the article, “The True ‘Beneficiary’ Is The Organization That Listens” by Denise Raquel Dunning, yesterday on the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network blog. Folks well know...

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Subjective, squishy, touchy, feely, and fundamental: Partnership matters

Mary Ann Mhina kindly asked to feature the following interview with me in the “Partnership People” section of her great website, Partnership Matters. She created the site to address “a rhetoric [in...

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Must vulnerability lead to dependency?

A guest post by Clement Dlamini Helping professions, by design, were meant to be some kind of temporary relief to people who are in positions of vulnerability. In my field of social work, we employ an...

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To change the world, a pulse is required

No matter how self-aware we are when we come into international aid, philanthropy, or social enterprise, most people, especially in the beginning, operate from a worldview in which change in poor...

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7 things you need to speak truth to power

Financial mismanagement. Lay-offs of local and international staff. Inappropriate conduct by leadership. Finally, a visit planned from headquarters to see what’s going on. What do you do? A superior...

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Listening to beneficiaries and the “more measurement” bandwagon

My letter to the editor in the most recent Stanford Social Innovation Review print edition, in response to “Listening to Those Who Matter Most, the Beneficiaries.” (Thanks @lithaca for the pic.) …“more...

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Preserving the “I don’t know” within big data

My main concern with an increasing reliance on big data is that the space for possibility and the need for control or certainty too often operate in an inverse relationship. In international aid and...

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Gates and Moyo: Assume the best first

Yesterday as I sat listening to an expert on negotiations discuss of the concept of “inputting evil,” I inevitably thought of this week’s row between Gates and Moyo. They of course we not engaged in...

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The Carpenters and the Rude Man

(A re-post) My foot braked as my eyes beheld the sight. As I drove through a quiet, tree-lined street in Lilongwe’s residential Area 3, fifty to sixty men carried a large, wooden A-frame above their...

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Palestinian civil society leaders: Reinforce us, don’t replace us.

“Foreign experts for what exactly?” Grassroots civil society activists from Palestine discuss their experiences with international aid in this Special Mention Award Winner of the Social Impact Media...

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Spotting community ownership: A reminder

These days I spend more of my time talking country ownership than community ownership, but they are one in the same, just at different units of analysis. So reposting a part of “Spotting Community...

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Don’t change the message. Change the messenger.

After reading Atul Gawande’s article in The New Yorker earlier this week, “How do good ideas spread?“, I thought of sharing again this guest post by WehYeoh. Gawande (on Colbert below) argues that the...

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