Unpacking Development

FEATURED EVENT OF THE WEEK: BLOG ACTION DAY 2009: Climate Change Thursday October 15, 2009. Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action [...]

I opened up the August Age issue of Vogue earlier this week to find that within the first few pages of the magazine there were two articles that focused on a public figure discussing their involvement with a charity. Christy Turlington and “It” girl of the moment (according to Vogue) Liya Kebede, in this case [...]

The Globe and Mail recently ran an article called “Banned Aid” on the new funding approach to international development agencies in Canada. Canada has made recent changes to their funding approach restricting their major funding to 20 key countries essentially abandoning countries like Malawi, Rwanda, Niger among others (they still give some aid but it [...]

Three hot docs so far: Fig Trees, Sergio and Reporter.  All three take on global issues, HIV/AIDS, humanitarianism, and compassion fatigue, respectively.  It turns out that they don’t really focus on these issues, but rather on 4 individuals that are trying to do something about them: two activists, a humanitarian and a New York Times [...]

There are many different ways to document development projects going on around the world. By using film, the Internet and print media sources an organization can promote what they do, shed light on the issues they aim to confront and can make creative uses of those mediums to further their agendas. Mixing those genres can [...]

Charities make use of almost every holiday they can to inspire people to donate and with Valentine’s Day quickly approaching there is a wide varietly of themed events and projects going on this month. Some of my favourites! Buy One Give Twice Celebrity Filofax Organiser Auction “Breast Cancer Campaign has asked a range of celebrities [...]

On the topic of international health rockstars (see previous post on Paul Farmer), I’m very excited to finally be heading to see Triage: Dr. James Orbinski’s Humanitarian Dilemma this Saturday.  I missed it at Hot Docs, and some other pre-screenings, but now that it’s coming to theatres I’m all set to go.  Some friends and [...]

Just finished Dr. James Orbinski’s new book, An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action for the 21st Century. For those of you who don’t know him, Orbinski is one of Canada’s global health heroes. He accepted the Nobel Prize for Doctors Without Borders while he was its international president and has since worked on developing MSF’s Access [...]