No more antibiotics

depth photography of blue and white medication pill

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 …

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“At least we fed the hippos”

“What you do [to provide better aid is] you shut up. You never arrive in a community with any ideas.” Ernesto Sirolli An often funny TED talk from Ernesto Sirolli on listening to communities in development, which also emphasises the importance of consulting entrepreneurs.

Embedding dignity in development

‘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 …

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Vanilla Ice’s development advice

Ice, Ice Baby

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

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 …

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Blogging development – advice from people who do it

person holding apple magic mouse

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 …

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