Take a Step Up: Impart Health Education in Calamity-Stricken Communities
This is a guest post written by Krisca Te. Krisca works with Open Colleges, Australia’s leading provider of TAFE courses equivalent and distance education. When not working, you can find her actively participating in local dog show events – in support of her husband.
—–
When a crisis hits in some far corner of the world, whether a drought in the North of Kenya or flooding in Sri Lanka, and the images of malnourished or orphaned children reach our television screens, we are naturally anxious to help out in some way.
But unfortunately, as the saying goes “the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” and while we may feel that organizing for a shipment of clothes or flying out to distribute free food is the solution, the reality is somewhat different. Our well-meaning gestures often do more harm than good, and unless we take the time to think…
Posted on May 13, 2012 at 8:13 am
Getting Married
I leave tomorrow for my wedding and honeymoon. Needless to say, I will not be online or taking phone calls until after May 10th.
As many of you know, I’ve been in Utah for the past two months taking care of my mother who was diagnosed with stage IV cancer just two weeks after we got engaged. We decided to go ahead with the wedding as waiting is not going to make anything better. However, we are going to elope as it would be too difficult at this time to have a large family wedding.
My aunt and cousins were kind enough to throw us a pre-wedding reception in Utah last month. We will have another pre-wedding reception in Oregon for his family.
We are eloping to the Oregon coast where my soon-to-be husband’s family had a cabin during his childhood.
Posted on April 30, 2012 at 12:51 pm
HOW NOT TO GIVE – By Stanford Storytelling Project
A 14 minute podcast by the Stanford Storytelling Project which discusses the 1 million shirts project, the blogosphere furor it created, and what finally happened. Click here to read the 60 posts written on the 1 million shirt debate.
Click here to Listen to the podcast
——-
Guides by Good Intentions are Not Enough
Good Intentions’ Guide to Holiday Charitable Giving
—–
Related posts:
What aid workers think of 1 million shirts
Why do Aid Bloggers get Snarky?
World Vision, the new 100,000 shirts
Donating shoes and other aid fads
6 questions you should ask before donating goods overseas
Posted on April 23, 2012 at 1:36 pm
Founder stories don’t really matter
As an entry for the Day Without Dignity 2012, I was sent a typical White in Shining Armor founder story. Someone that had left their good job to volunteer in Africa and ended up starting their own nonprofit at great expense to themselves. We’ve all heard stories similar to this before.
But here’s the thing, the personal journey of the founder doesn’t matter guarantee good aid.
A compelling founder story, such as Greg Mortenson’s, doesn’t mean that the nonprofit is successful or even moderately helpful. A boring founder story doesn’t mean that the nonprofit is floundering or failing. There is no correlation between the compellingness of a founder story and the competency of their nonprofit. And yet we keep focusing on them.
Katherine Lucey, founder of Solar Sister, wrote about the pressure for a good founder story during the “Three Cups of Tea” debate. I’ve…
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 6:25 am
Al Jazeera’s The Stream Talks Aid and #Dignity2012
This post is crossposted with generous permission from A View from the Cave.
—–
TMS “Teddy” Ruge, Co-Founder of Project Diaspora and Joel Charny, Vice President for Humanitarian Policy at InterAction sit down on the orange couch yesterday to discuss the way aid is marketed and disbursed in Africa. “The dehumanizing comes into the fact we have to be continually looked at as recipients, as the poor, as if the only thing we have to offer are these beans so you can buy them in your coffee,” explained Teddy. That is why A Day Without Dignity came into existence last year and was held yesterday. The hope is to find ways to shift the story of Africa from a single continent of misery to a place full of many countries, people, desires, cultures and experiences.
Charny struck a middle chord which I believe to be right.…
Posted on April 17, 2012 at 8:02 am
Real Impact with Saeed Wame
This article originally appeared on how-matters.org, a blogsite aimed at raising the level of human dignity within international aid. Its creator, Jennifer Lentfer, has worked with over 300 grassroots organizations in east and southern Africa over the past decade. Having served with various international organizations in Zimbabwe, Malawi, Namibia, and the U.S., today she works to advance the efforts of aid workers, grantmakers, and social entrepreneurs to make international aid more locally responsive.
All of the rest of the entries for a Day Without Dignity 2012 – Local Champions can be found here.
—–
I always walk away from a conversation with Saeed Wame, founder and director of Namwera AIDS Coordinating Committee (NACC) of Malawi, with a new understanding. Whether he be blowing my concept of “capacity” wide open, or offering a completely new definition of volunteer, Saeed is the sort of community leader whose wisdom and…
Posted on April 15, 2012 at 2:21 pm
Mama Lucy on Poverty – Local Champions
The following is cross-posted with permission from The Epic Change Blog. It was originally written by Mama Lucy for Blog Action Day 2008. I’ve cross-posted it here as part of A Day Without Dignity 2012.
—–
What is Poverty?
- Lack of something which otherwise could be of great importance for you. For example: basic human needs, good sources of income, or ability to think well.
- Not having enough to meet basic needs.
- Having something but not in a good quality which is supposed to be.
According to my first and last definition, I don’t consider myself as a poor person. I’ve no good sources of income but I’ve the ability to think and utilise the little I’m having so as to bring change to my community.
When talking about poor people, others’ minds go straight to not having money, shelter, food…
Posted on April 12, 2012 at 11:39 am
A Day Without Dignity 2012 – Local Champions
A Day Without Dignity was started last year as a counter-campaign to TOMs Shoes One Day Without Shoes event. With so many Whites in Shining Armor projects making the news we decided this year to focus on local champions instead.
We’re asking aid workers, the diaspora, and people from areas that receive charity to speak up in blogs, on twitter, or at school about the contributions and needs of local champions. More details on this event can be found here.
Remember to send curriculum suggestions/ideas to Tom at Murph[at]aviewfromthecave.com and send t-shirt entries to TMS Ruge at Teddy[at]projectdiaspora.org
Please use the hashtag #LocalChampions when discussing this event on twitter.
As posts or videos are submitted they will be linked to below with the most recent posts at the top.
—–
46. Burkas to tracksuits – IRIN – Suggested by Tom Murphy “Three great stories of Somali women taking on equity…
Posted on April 11, 2012 at 2:36 pm
A Closer Look at TOMS Shoes
Tomorrow is TOMS shoes annual One Day Without Shoes publicity event. I thought it would be a good time to highlight this podcast by Tiny Spark which takes a critical look at the founder of TOMS, Blake Mycoskie, as well as how TOMS shoes operates.
There were several things I didn’t know about TOMS shoes that Amy Costello highlights in her podcast. One of the things I found enlightening is that Blake got his start in reality television competing in both the second season of Amazing Race and in The Sexiest Bachelor in America. For me this goes a long way in explaining why TOMS shoes uses the Whites in Shining Armor model. The podcast also looks at the very close ties that TOMS shoe drops have with religious activities.
Tiny Spark’s 20 minute podcast called “TOMS Shoes: A Closer…
Posted on April 9, 2012 at 9:20 am
Announcing A Day Without Dignity 2012 – Local Champions
We are happy to announce that A Day Without Dignity, 2012 will be held on Monday, April 16th.
A Day Without Dignity was originally launched as a counter-protest to TOMS One Day Without Shoes event. Last year we received over 70 blog post and articles related to problems with donated goods, especially shoes. The Day Without Dignity video created after the event has been viewed over 28,000 times (I know it’s nothing compared with KONY 2012, but still pretty good) and is used by professors and college clubs to introduce the problems with donated goods.
This year’s event will focus on Local Champions. The theme was chosen to show an alternative to awareness raising events that often focus on Whites in Shining Armor at the expense of the dignity of the people they’re trying to help.
For this year’s event, we are seeking…
Posted on April 7, 2012 at 5:29 am
