Submitting guest blogs is open to Global Washington’s members of the Atlas level and above. We value a diversity of opinions on a broad range of subjects of interest to the global health and development community.
Blog article submissions should be 500-1500 words. Photos, graphs, videos, and other art that supports the main themes are strongly encouraged.
You may not be the best writer, and that’s okay. We can help you shape and edit your contribution. The most important thing is that it furthers an important conversation in your field, and that it is relatively jargon-free. Anyone without a background in global development should still be able to engage with your ideas.
If you include statistics or reference current research, please hyperlink your sources in the text, wherever possible.
Have an idea of what you’d like to write about? Let’s continue the conversation! Email comms@globalWA.org and put “Blog Idea” in the subject line.
Posted on September 14, 2011
Supermodel Petra Nemcova’s surviving the 2004 tsunami while in Phuket, Thailand, led her to establishing the Happy Hearts Fund, a charitable organization to address what she called “the hopelessness in the eyes of children” that she saw when she returned to Thailand after the tsunami. She wanted to close the “gap” that exists after first responders leave a disaster site and before full-scale reconstruction has begun by providing “islands of safety” for children in the form of sustainable schools. She explained the model behind the Happy Hearts Fund to a gathering of representatives from 8 different disaster relief organizations that are members of Global Washington.
Following Petra’s brief presentation, the Global Washington members had a lively discussion about their experiences – both positive and negative – in disaster relief work. Beryl Cheal of Disaster Training International pointed out that there are certain places in the world where you know there are going to be disasters (such as the Philippines), so disaster preparedness is important. John Scanlon of Oxfam shared the names of four initiatives – the Sphere Project, People in Aid, the Humanitarian Accountability Project (HAP), and the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance (ALNAP) – that are trying to improve quality and accountability in the humanitarian sector. Mercy Corps shared its experience using information and communications technology (ICT) to collect information on maternal health in Indonesia.
Many agreed that having a local partner “on the ground” in a disaster area is important. Petra commented that the Happy Hearts Fund criteria for taking on a project include having a local NGO or corporation in place, as well as needing good local community engagement, reflecting Global Washington’s principle of local ownership.
Posted on September 12, 2011
By Anna Knox and Peter Veit
Regardless of what matters to you – access to education, universal food security, strengthening women’s rights, or a healthier environment – land rights plays a key role in achieving these goals.
When people have secure access to land, it can lead to:
- Economic development through increased agricultural productivity,
- Improved childhood nutrition,
- Increased school attendance and investments in basic education,
- Increased environmental stewardship,
- Reduced potential for social instability and conflict,
- Reduce vulnerability to domestic violence
Focus on Land in Africa, a recently launched web-based tool focused on sub-Saharan Africa, aims to help policymakers and practitioners understand the links between land rights and critical development outcomes. Designed by World Resources Institute and Landesa as an online education tool, the site is interactive and uses slideshows, timelines, maps, videos and more in order to appeal to and engage users. Currently, the tool features lessons drawn from six sub-Saharan African countries: Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Uganda. These lessons were developed with funding support provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. More countries will be featured as the tool grows.
The education tool helps connect the dots between in-depth research and what gets filtered onto the front page of our newspapers now and then. How are the conflicts between herders and farmers in Mali connected to land rights? How are some women in Ghana using customary rules to gain greater control over land? Do villagers in Tanzania have legal rights to land that they do not have title to? Is the expansion of biofuels threatening people’s land rights in Africa? The site deepens understanding of these critical issues beyond what a simple newspaper or magazine article can convey, but without having to wade through dense research reports and complex language.
The transformational nature of access to land and secure rights to land has been illustrated by land to the tiller programs in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, which were instrumental in spurring economic development after World War II. More recently, a number of tenure reforms have been implemented in sub-Saharan Africa, in such countries as Burkina Faso, Mozambique, and Tanzania. Increasingly, African governments are ackn0wleding the importance of legally recognizing the land rights of communities who have farmed, herded, lived on and otherwise depended on the land and its natural resources for years. In the wake of these promising changes, sharing lessons of experience is critical to nurturing new land reform efforts and continuously improving current strategies. The tool supports this sort of cross-fertilization.
NGOs working in the fields of maternal health, children’s nutrition, education, women’s rights, and the environment can increase the effectiveness of their work when they understand the role of land tenure and integrate this thinking into their own poverty alleviation approaches. Often dismissed as too complex, land tenure issues are regularly overlooked by other development sectors. This web-based tool helps untangle the complexity by presenting the issues in lesson formats tied to real-life challenges and solutions.
Focus on Land in Africa is meant to be a free educational resource for development practitioners, policymakers, students, researchers, academics and other audiences interested in learning more about the intersection between land rights and international development issues.
Comments on the Focus on Land in Africa tool and on this blog post are welcomed.
Anna Knox is the senior director of Africa Programs at Landesa, a non-governmental development organization working to secure land rights for the world’s poorest people.
Peter Veit is the project manager for the Equity, Poverty and Environment Initiative at World Resources Institute (WRI). WRI is a global environmental think tank that goes beyond research to put ideas into action, working at the intersection of environment and human needs.
Posted on September 9, 2011
The Global Education Initiative is moving quickly to gear up towards the Summit on Global Education on November 18, 2011. Thanks to our dedicated coordinating committee and task force members who conducted interviews with experts in the field, the first round of information gathering has been well underway. From the interview feedback, we have a great start on recommendations and inputs on improving the global education offerings in Washington State.
Now Global Washington has embarked on the second phase of information gathering – Community Conversations!
A series of community conversations will be held in September and October to gather key recommendations and inputs from diverse groups of practitioners across the state. They include individuals in education, nonprofits and businesses. In order to ensure a well-rounded geographic representation, these community conversations will cover different parts of the state.
Stay tuned for our announcements on the dates and locations very soon! If you are interested in hosting a conversation, please email eugenia@globalwa.org.