An Atypical Transition

Changing Jobs in the Global Humanitarian and Int’l Development Sector. Job transitions are weird and somewhat stressful times for people no matter what kind of work they do, but I’m beginning to think that global humanitarian and development professionals may have it worse than most. On top of the usual uncertainty and stress of changing […]

The Culturally-Sensitive Butt:

I’ve got a rule when I travel – I eat or drink whatever is given to me by the communities I visit. I know that sometimes this will make me sick, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay.

LinkedIn turns attention to Volunteerism

Survey Says, “Your Volunteer Experience Matters” LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network released the results this morning* of a survey of nearly two thousand professionals in the U.S. and found that 89% have volunteering experience, but only 45% include this on their resumes. This is a mistake according to Nicole Williams, LinkedIn’s Connection Director. “Professionals often […]

Badly Presented Data

One of my pet peeves is badly visualized or explained data. I’ve read evaluation reports where it literally felt like the person just randomly pushed graph command buttons over Excel data tables and where the explanatory text was totally unyoked from the data display.  I’ve furrowed my brow and wasted time trying to comprehend the […]

Generation X and Volunteerism – nuancing the “hero” status

A couple of days ago I published a graph showing that Gen Xers have increased their rates of volunteerism over the past 5-6 years, while the rates of the Baby Boomers and Millennials decreased. (See full post here.) Being that I am smack in the middle of the Gen X birth range, this was a […]

Volunteerism and Employment: the surprising relationship

Volunteerism: it’s not a function of spare time! We know that people volunteer when they have both the heart for it and the resources for it, but which resource is more important, time or money? I would have thought that time would be the critical resource. This feels like the case for me anyway – the […]

El primer Principio de Desarrollo Internacional Basado en la Comunidad

A pedido voy a publicar de nuevo el articulo Staying for Tea (Quedándose para el Té) como una serie de entradas de blog en seis partes. El artículo fue publicado originalmente en una revista llamada The Global Citizen (El Ciudadano Global). Mientras publico cada sección, las siguientes ligas se activarán: [1:Quedarse para el Té] [2:Importa el […]

Staying for Tea: coming to you soon ¡en español!

ENGLISH As I’ve been tracking the location of my subscribers, I’ve noticed a funny thing. I’ve got more readers of this blog from Cambodia, India, and Vanuatu than I do from Bolivia, Colombia, and Guatemala – places where I’ve actually lived…for like seven years! Strange, I thought, to have such extensive personal and professional networks […]

A Staying for Tea Story: India 2006

As the depth of my hypocrisy sunk in, I struggled to contain my emotions. “Tell her ‘yes, and I’ll be right back,’” I instructed my translator, as shame deepened the red of my sun-baked ears. Turning to my small entourage of colleagues, I asked them to follow me off the woman’s property back toward the […]

Staying for Tea – Conclusion

We should not be paralyzed by the fear of committing errors, but we should be self-conscious and think critically about how we go about serving others.  This is the final post of a 6-part series republishing the original Staying for Tea article from The Global Citizen journal (2005). You can link to the other posts in this series here: [1: Stay for Tea] [2: […]