Rough Development

No more antibiotics

Nathan — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 12:43:13 +0000

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Why we’re running out of effective antibiotics – in between 10 and 20 years time, all bacteria may be antibiotic resistant.

That means that dangerous infections like Tuberculosis grow a lot more dangerous, and minor ailments like strep throat or an ear infection become killers.

Alanna Shaikh explains what this means and how an innovative approach to fighting bacteria is needed.

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“At least we fed the hippos”

Nathan — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 12:32:23 +0000

via TED

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via TED

“What you do [to provide better aid is] you shut up. You never arrive in a community with any ideas.”

An often funny TED talk from Ernesto Sirolli on listening to communities in development, which also emphasises the importance of consulting entrepreneurs.

My friend Nicholas (a programme manager on water and sanitatiion projects in Ashanti region, Ghana) has also blogged about the importance of community meetings as well as direct consultation with stakeholder groups including community leaders, men’s and women’s groups and religious leaders. Please consider following Nicholas’s blog.

Richard the piano tuner

Nathan — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 12:16:23 +0000

A short film about Richard, who tunes pianos during the day and sleeps rough by night.

Updated site

Nathan — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 20:56:47 +0000

I’ve updated Rough Development with a new template that works on mobile and gives the site a breath of fresh air, hope you like it.

I’ll try and get back to posting regularly too.

Meanwhile, Meg L sent me this recommendation for a video from a few years ago, BBC Natural World documentary ‘Farm for the Future’, in which farmer Rebecca Hosking explores the terrifying dependence of modern intensive farming on fossil fuels and looks at the role of permaculture, forest farming and other practices in regenerating agricultural land and achieving a sustainable future for farming.

Samsara will be a feast for the eyes

Nathan — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:18:42 +0000

From the people who made Baraka, Samsara. Shot over five years on 70mm film in twenty-five countries. Eyegasm.

Embedding dignity in development

Nathan — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:46:46 +0000

‘A Day Without Dignity‘ was established to provide a counterbalance to the popular image of people in the developing world as hopeless, helpless, and in need of ‘saving’ by affluent Westerners. The latest of these images to be shared around the world are of Ugandans, apparently powerless against the warlord Joseph Kony, waiting for salvation from American high school kids in T-shirts that carry his name. Most Ugandans don’t recognise this image of their country, and have reacted angrily to it (if you’re going to share something on YouTube around, share this).

The ‘Whites in Shining Armour’ phenomenon is nothing new – Ivan Illich spoke to American students in Mexico about it in 1968. Yet over four decades on, people in developing countries are still commonly regarded, and reported, as victims with no agency and no clue. For various reasons many are desperate, without hope, in dire need of help, but to suggest that all development and aid is this way does a disservice to the many, many grassroots initiatives in the developing world that are bringing about real, sustainable change in their communities.

Mum and child, Bimma, Ghana. Once a week, community members in Bimma come out in force to do physical work around the village such as repairing roads or, in this case, filling in the foundations of their new kindergarten. This happens in many villages and is encouraged (and enforced) by chiefs and community leaders.

Images, videos and stories are being shared by development workers and grassroots organisations, celebrating local champions – the people working in their communities to address local needs. It’s also a good time to focus on how to ensure that local champions are heard in the wider development discourse.

There are so many great examples of local development initiatives and individuals communicating their work, and in some cases these are well-established projects working across vast areas. A few years ago I was privileged to meet Dr Cletus Babu, the founder of SCAD (Social Change and Development), an NGO working in Tamil Nadu. Cletus, a former Catholic priest, started working in the small town of Cheranmahadevi in 1985, and since then has built a formidable organisation that has so far served over 500,000 people, focussing on the empowerment of women and marginalised Dalit communities as well as agricultural work, environmental protection and other initiatives. At the other end of the scale are small organisations and schools like Jay’s School in Cambodia, set up in the spare room of a house and teaching local children languages, art and dance.

But not all successful locally owned initiatives have to have been started by locals. Soria Moria Boutique Hotel in Siem Reap, Cambodia was established in 2007 by a Norwegian couple, but from the very beginning had a clear mission to provide development opportunities for staff and the community. Soria Moria sources silks, crafts and other goods from other enterprises in the area, provides ongoing staff training, works with local NGOs to provide youth training and employment opportunities and engages with the community in several other ways. In May 2011, Soria Moria made its local staff majority shareholders and owners of the business. Soria Moria was just named a runner-up in the Tourism for Tomorrow Awards for Community Benefit.

A Day Without Dignity is more than just a counterbalance to the stereotyping perpetuated by the likes of #KONY2012 and TOMS Shoes – I hope it’s part of a wider shift in attitudes towards the developing world and people living in poverty. As we near 2015 and David Cameron is set to chair a panel to discuss what should come after the Millennium Development Goals, there is an increasing awareness of the changing shape of the developing world, the distribution of poverty (including poverty in developed nations), the roles of aid and trade, the contribution of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and other emerging economies, the importance of well-executed social enterprises and the need to consult people about the decisions that affect them. Preserving human dignity can be an embedded principle which guides all of this.

Find tweets on this topic at #Dignity2012 and #LocalChampions, and see #Dignity2012 discussed on Al Jazeera’s The Stream.

Vanilla Ice’s development advice

Nathan — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 12:38:48 +0000

Maybe it’s because it’s a four-day weekend here, maybe I’ve been inspired by Britney Spears’ Guide To Semiconductor Physics (look it up), I don’t know, but I just discovered that Vanilla Ice, intentionally or not, offers one of the most essential pearls of international development wisdom I’ve seen yet:

Stop; collaborate and listen.

Do not follow Vanilla’s advice to ‘light up a stage and wax a chump like a candle’. This is usually not appreciated and may be seen as unprofessional. You should also exercise caution when accepting advice from someone who raps wearing peach-coloured trousers.

*gets coat*

Small voices

Nathan — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 11:18:59 +0000

Duncan Green speculates in From Poverty To Power on why NGOs struggle with blogging.

Why does anyone struggle with blogging? You feel like you’re going to be graded. You don’t necessarily want to share your thoughts with everyone. You started a draft post and deleted it a million times. Nothing much happened this week. Someone told you you should be blogging three times a week and it all just seems like a heck of a commitment.

Satellite broadband in the Cambodian countryside

I have worked with a few small organisations, and observed other barriers. The proverbial has hit the fan and you’re dealing with that. The electricity has been out for five days, the UPS is worn out and there’s something nesting in the computer. You’ve been writing reports all day already. English isn’t your first language but you feel like you should be writing in English. The volunteer who started the blog left and didn’t train anybody. You’ve tried several times to upload a photograph through a tortoiselike internet connection but it’s just not happening. You emailed a bunch of information to the charity that supports you abroad and they just forwarded it on to their small mailing list of previous donors. You hate computers.

The irony is that really small organisations probably don’t have a communications team, when they’re the only ones who can communicate what they’re up to. Questions of ‘sign-offs’, tone of voice and authenticity are irrelevant – anything that comes out comes unfiltered, straight from the horse’s mouth, and is as likely to be a set of pictures and some commentary in a Word document as anything else. It’s all a very long way away from the ABBAs.

If you only follow the development blogosphere, then you’re missing the stories of the very many grassroots organisations that don’t necessarily blog. As Duncan Green says, “there is more to life (and social media) than blogging”. If you’re interested in what smaller organisations are up to, you might need to put some more effort into hearing what they have to say.

Perpetual ocean

Nathan — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:48:56 +0000

Looking uncannily like Van Gogh’s ‘The Starry Night‘, a visualisation of ocean surface currents around the world between June 2005 and December 2007. A bit lovely. Best watched big, in HD.

via B3ta.

Blogging development – advice from people who do it

Nathan — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 08:34:25 +0000

A stock photo loosely connected with blogging. Sorry.

The international development community is active, passionate, switched on to new technology, and generally pretty cool with newbies. So if you’re interested in development and you have something to say, you might consider blogging.

There’s a lot of advice on the internet, particularly about blogging. If you removed all of the blog entries with bulleted lists of the things you should be doing, the internet would fall over. Fortunately, there is some genuinely useful advice out there for people interested in sharing development learning, ideas and best practice – from people who are already doing it.

Marc F. Bellemare has written a good list of points you should be aware of before you even start a blog. I’m currently encouraging a friend working in a development role to start, and this has been a useful reminder of some basics. Accumulate content before you promote your blog. Be concise. Keep it up. Use Twitter to engage.

Chris Blattman’s blog carries some advice on avoiding the perils of blogging. Don’t write angry, avoid arrogance, don’t escalate, don’t be too negative. It’s all in his post and well worth a look. It may all seem like common sense stuff but the anger, arrogance, escalation and negativity you see in some online environments (not necessarily development related) suggests that the advice is still needed.

I’d add to Chris’s tips with a few of my own, and include behaviour in social media:

Don’t write anything about someone you wouldn’t say to their face. Self-explanatory?
If you’re not sure whether you should hit the publish button, don’t. Save a draft. Leave it for 24 hours, then come back to it. If you’re still not happy, trash it. Some of the most useful blog entries I ever wrote were the ones I never published – sometimes all I needed to do was articulate a frustration or research a topic, I didn’t need to share it.
Be prepared to discuss your writing in the comments or elsewhere. Be prepared to apologise or change your mind if you’ve been persuaded of an argument. I have a lot more interest in reading the blogs of people who actually engage with their readers, on the blog or elsewhere. It’s what blogs are for. It’s a discussion, not a commandment carved in stone.
Don’t tweet angry. Or grumpy. It’s really unattractive. People may well care, but assume that nobody cares if you’re in a bad mood. If you’re pissed off, you’re better off walking away from your computer and being outside anyway.
Avoid snark at all costs. Even if you think you’re good enough.

Weh Yeoh has started an excellent discussion on the perils and merits of writing critically or controversially online – with contributions from some great bloggers. By the way, if you’re interested in development or working in it and you’re not on Aidsource, be on Aidsource.

Wayan Vota offers some good advice on blogging for professional success in international development. Work out who your audience is and focus on them, engaging them where they reside. Keep your focus on specific outcomes. Don’t rely too much on your blog as a promotional tool – remember things like your business cards, your CV.

Check out these as well:

Tom Murphy’s blog A View From The Cave showcases some of the best aid and development blogs out there.
whydev.org is a great collaborative platform for development discourse.
Hii Dunia has a comprehensive directory and other resources.