The Road to the Horizon

Sahel: The world is waiting for pictures of starving children

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Sun, 27 May 2012 02:09:10 PDT

When I see the dynamics of the "international aid", I get thoroughly disgusted at times. Take the Sahel hunger crisis: Less than a year ago, the international humanitarian community got heavily criticized for their lack of advanced warnings, and preventive responses in the Somalia drought crisis. While the first clear signals of a major drought in the Horn of Africa came as early as August 2010, it was not until a year later, in July 2011, that the international community reacted....

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Our microfinance team allocated its 1,666th loan

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 16:40:48 PDT

Would you even know where Kyrgyzstan is? Leave alone, been there? And would you even have thought to finance an entrepreneur there? Ever? Well we did. On all three accounts: "Knew", "Visited", and "Financed"... We just financed our 1,666th loan (that is one thousands six hundred and sixtysixthththth) loan with our Kiva micro financing team. The loan went to Zaripakhon, 52 years and mother of three children. She is a cattle farmer since 2000 selling milk and dairy products. To order...

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KONY2012: Can Social Media Capture a War Criminal?

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 06:54:09 PST

I blogged before about Kony, the infamous leader of the Lord's Resistance Army. For decennia, he has been terrorizing, first Uganda, and now, larger areas of the surrounding countries. According to the guys from KONY2012, one of the reasons why Kony has not been captured, is lack of a lack of means and efforts. Those in turn, can only be possible if the public opinion pushes policy makers to allocate enough resources in order to smoke out an indicted mass murderer. Thus, was the approach...

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Monsanto Go Away

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 04:06:15 PST

As part of the Occupy Maui movement, The Human Revolution has a clear message for Monsanto. More on Monsanto on The Road.

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Happy 2012 everyone. Now start changing the world, will you?

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Sun, 27 May 2012 10:11:59 PDT

Since we kicked off our Kiva microfinance project "Change Starts Here" in November 2008, our Kiva Lending Team has already funded over 1,500 projects, for a total value of US$54,000. Check out our project score card on our Have Impact! blog. In 2011, I had a wide range of sponsors for the blogs I manage. After deducting the running costs for my blogs, I want to invest the left-over funds in our microfinance project "Change Starts Here" . Seems like a good way to start 2012 off on a good...

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Looking for a job as an aidworker? Here is a good start!

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 01:20:00 PST

Ever since I wrote the post on "How to become an aidworker", I get mail from people asking for advice. Most struggle with getting into "the system", which is indeed the hardest part: "getting through that solid iron gate". Part of the problem is that people don't know where to look for vacancies. Job announcements in the aid and nonprofit sector are spread in many different places. I tried to change that, and built an aggregator. AidJobs collecting job vacancies in the international aid...

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Teased bull frog eats finger

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 00:15:30 PST

An African bull frog is trying to catch ants on an smartphone screen. Kinda funny. Is even more funny when he takes revenge.. Discovered via AllTop

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Where the hell is Matt?

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:03:59 PST

This is really sweet. From his website: Matt is a 35-year-old deadbeat from Connecticut who used to think that all he ever wanted to do in life was make and play videogames. Matt achieved this goal pretty early and enjoyed it for a while, but eventually realized there might be other stuff he was missing out on. In February of 2003, he quit his job in Brisbane, Australia and used the money he'd saved to wander around Asia until it ran out. He made this site so he could keep...

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Hans Rosling: The only way to stop population growth.. is to increase child survival rates.

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Tue, 29 May 2012 00:51:15 PDT

... even if it sounds contradictory: Increasing child survival rates will stop population growth. With thanks to GB for the link!

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The UN debate of the day: Where is the 7 billionth baby born?

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 07:42:10 PDT

From our UN-correspondent: In 1999, the UN decided the 6 billionth (is it 6 billionth or 6th billion or 6th billionth?) human being would be born in Sarajevo (picture). The fact that the Balkan area was still recovering from a nasty war, made that decision easy. For months now, the UN member states have been debating when and where the 7 billionth member of our human community was to be born. The US veto'd any country which had more than 10% of muslim population, forgetting that would not...

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Video: Wear your seat belt

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:52:32 PDT

Amazing what emotional impact a good video clip can make, no? PS: Updated the post. Video fixed.

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The status of the world, according to the Global Hunger Index 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 05:28:10 PDT

IFPRI (The International Food Policy Research Institute) just published its 6th annual Global Hunger Index. If you want an overview of the state of the world, related to poverty, hunger, and overall development achievements, I think this is a must-read. The Index combines three equally weighted indicators into one score: the proportion of people who are undernourished, the proportion of children under five who are underweight, and the under-five child mortality rate. The 2011...

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Steve Jobs: Lessons on life

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 05:31:29 PDT

Steve Jobs (RIP) talking about his lessons on life, to young Stanford University graduates. About dropping out to drop in at college, about the trust that one day the dots in your life will connect. About to love doing what you do. About not loosing the limited time you have on Earth, by living someone else's life. Truly inspiring. Reminded me of Randy Pausch's Last Lecture.

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Calling on the good and willing

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 19:35:21 PDT

After 17 years in the field, working in front line humanitarian emergency response, of which 15 years in food aid relief, I took a sabbatical break. Taking a distance allowed me to discover an other side of the humanitarian work, something more longer term, but with no less impact: agricultural development. Over the past sabbatical year, I had the opportunity to work with a team at CGIAR, mostly on social media related projects. That work brought me to the field, talking to farmers about...

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The importance of bio-diversity.

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 04:48:09 PDT

A sweet, unpretentious, yet significant TEDtalk by Cary Fowler, the executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, on the importance of preserving the bio-diversity of our seeds, and the role of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in this. While often dubbed as "the Doomsday Vault", the half a million seeds stored at Svalbard guarantee a future rather than a doomsday: As the natural conditions under which we grow our food continuously change, our seeds also need to adapt. As these changes...

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A move towards ethical advertising?

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:43:32 PDT

An article in the press made me chuckle at first, and afterwards, made me think.. Ads featuring Julia Roberts and Christy Turlington for a beauty product of giant L'Oreal were banned by the UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The ASA stated the retouched images misled consumers by exaggerating the results the beauty products could achieve. The advertising agency admitted the images had been "digitally retouched" to lighten the skin, clean up make-up, reduce dark shadows and...

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So who is the dude in the suit?

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 14:28:24 PDT

Okay.... self sensoring prevailed. Figured out who the dude was. Post deleted.

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Another drought. Is the development failing?

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 04:17:40 PDT

When I started working in the Horn of Africa, in the mid 90's, my first emergency was a drought operation. Between 1900 and now, the region had more than 18 famine periods. This year, we have another one. And I am sure - unless we change things drastically - there will be another drought emergency a few years from now. As an aidworker, I always worked in emergencies. Droughts, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, wars, were my daily work... Some of these calamities are hard to anticipate, leave...

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Dog and man: "I ate it all"

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 11:14:43 PDT

...because it is Saturday, something lighter. Discovered via: @bethkanter

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The worst photoshopped press pictures

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 11:12:48 PDT

Gone are the times where the press was the only source of information. Social media is here! So when state run press agencies think of getting away with mis-information or propaganda, social media kicks in. As when this string of Photoshop woo's got exposed through social media: Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, is made to believe he swore in the newly appointed governor of the troubled Hama region, last week. However, the photoshop artist who doctored this picture should rethink his...

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The world at 1,000 frames per second

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:42:55 PDT

Today... because there is too much misery in the world, a post of beauty in small things. Discovered via Laughing Squid

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So why did the West push for South Sudan's independence?

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 05:52:32 PDT

75% of the oil reserve in Sudan, perhaps 6.5 billion barrels, is located in South Sudan (Source). Since the "second" Sudan war between the North and South started in 1983, an estimated 2 million civilians were killed, and at least 4 million were displaced at least once. During the war, aid agencies set up one of the largest, most costly and complex humanitarian relief operations ever, "Operation Lifeline Sudan", running a "relief pipeline" from Kenya (and partially Uganda) into the South....

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How egoistic can people be?

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 08:41:04 PDT

A video showing two motorcyclists who got entangled on a busy highway in China... Nobody seemed very eager to help...

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Yeaah, It's a Party in the CIA

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 16:44:41 PDT

yeah, we’ve got our backups all over the world, from Kazakhstan to Bombay; payin’ the bribes like yeah, pluggin’ the leaks like yeah; interrogating the scum of the earth, we’ll break them by the break of day! yeeeaaahhh, it’s a party in the CIA! by Weird Al Yankovic

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Which countries are the happiest?

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 03:33:00 PDT

GOOD's World Database of Happiness has tracked down how happy people over the past 30 years. Check out the interesting infographic on the state of happiness in the different countries, over the past years.

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