Wag the dog – the perils of fundraising

Originally posted on KM on a dollar a day:
I’ve been reflecting a couple of interesting discussions lately on aid communication and fundraising.  In the first, Kurante organized a Google Hangout on “Poverty Porn” i.e. the use of negative, shocking images in aid campaigns (the recording and the twitter storify of the discussion can be…

Fear is the Opposite of Generosity

What now? May 20, 1998. Fifteen years ago today my world rebooted. It shut down catastrophically when a bus lurched off the roadway and crashed into a 1,000-foot-deep ravine in rural Bolivia. I was a 25-year old missionary on that bus. My young wife was with me.  Out of the blackness, the world began to […]

The Trouble With Impact Investors’ Brains

Creating a clear value proposition for impact investors may be less about finding the right mix of financial and social returns than it is about choosing which of the two you’re really going to be about.                                       […]

The Most Effective Aid Blog Post Ever? (You’d Never Guess)

Okay, this is my last post on aid blogging. On the heels of my Who’s Who post and the Aid Blogging Charts, I’m about to go from being known as an aid blogger to that guy who blogs about aid bloggers. Ick. But I found this post today and at first it left me stupefied, […]

The SOCCKET ball bounces back?

The SOCCKET is a soccer ball with an internal mechanism that turns movement into stored energy that can be accessed through a built in jack. It’s marketed as a “FUNctional solution to real-world problems” – specifically the lack of access to reliable electricity and the negative side effects of using kerosene lanterns, diesel generators, and […]

Aid Blogging: A Cautionary Tale in Charts

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 […]

The New Who’s Who of International Development Blogging

The Updated Blogroll I realized the other day that I hadn’t updated my blogroll in about a year and a half. A lot has changed since then. Bill Easterly closed down the Aid Watch blog and is now blogging at NYU’s Development Research Institute; Tales from the Hood went off the air and locked many of his […]

Deflating the SOCCKET ball.

It’s a soccer ball. It’s an electrical generator. It’s innovation and social entrepreneurship out to save the world. It’s everything that’s wrong with international development today.                                                           […]

The Best and Worst of Staying for Tea: Milestone 25,000

Blogging milestones are good excuses to write a ‘greatest hits’ compilation. This blog reached two this month: its two-year anniversary and 25,000 page views. In case you missed any of these posts, here’s a chance to go back and read the best and worst of Staying for Tea…and the winners are: Most Popular: Poverty Tourism: A […]

Peace Corps (Volunteers) Turn 51: Baby Boomers & the Changing Face of Volunteering Abroad

Baby boomers are still asking ‘What can I do for my country (and my world)?’ and the answer is, probably a lot more than they could when they were twenty. Peace Corps and Bonnie Lee Black have something in common: age. Peace Corps celebrated its 51st anniversary in March this year; Bonnie was 51 when she closed […]