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Contributor Guidelines
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 May 17, 2023
By Debika Goswami, Senior Program Lead, S M Sehgal Foundation
Farmer in his millet farm in Nuh, Haryana, India. Photo: S M Sehgal Foundation
In the culinary history of India, the existence of millets, also known as nutri-cereals, can be traced back to 4500 BC, which indicates it was an integral part of local food cultures for centuries. However, millet varieties were referred to as coarse grains in the post-Green Revolution phase in the later twentieth century. They were rapidly replaced by their more-refined counterparts, wheat and paddy, as significant staples in the agricultural landscape of India. With the marginalization of millets as a staple on consumers’ plates, its cultivation also became less cash remunerative. Hence, millet’s share in the total grain production of India gradually decreased from 40 to about 20 percent.
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Posted on May 15, 2023
By Stephen Meyers, Associate Professor of International Studies and Law, Societies & Justice Director, Center for Global Studies, University of Washington
Man in wheelchair, Iran. Photo: Javad Esmaeili, Unsplash
Persons with disabilities and older persons, defined as 60 years of age and above, represent two of the most significant constituencies for achieving global development. Less than 1% of official foreign aid, however, reaches persons with disabilities and older persons despite their human right to development being clearly defined in international law and policy. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which was adopted by the United Nations in 2006 and currently has 186 States-Parties, mandates the inclusion of persons with disabilities in all aspects of development through Article 32 on International Cooperation. In regards to older persons, Michelle Bachelet used her term as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to make the argument that “older people should be able to actively participate and contribute to sustainable development,” and their marginalization from development constitutes a human rights violation.
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Posted on May 11, 2023
by Laura Baerwolf, Chief Operating Officer, Mona Foundation
Kali greeting Mona Foundation visitor at her home. Photo: Kelly Lacy, Make Beautiful, Mona Foundation
This is a true story that illustrates what happens when all members of a population, especially women, are enabled to participate as equals in the socio-economic activities of their community and contribute to its development. In Mona Foundation’s experience, education is central to such individual and social transformation but only if it includes lessons of gender equality, ethics, and service alongside academics and the arts.
We first met Kali in 2013 when she enrolled in the Barli Development Institute for Rural Women in Indore, India, a Mona partner since 2005. In the decade since, Kali’s life experience has provided a representative real-time narrative of the transformative power of educating women and girls. Her story shows how a young woman, empowered through education to improve her own life and see herself as an agent of social change, can impact her family, peers, and village – and, in time, change the hearts and minds of an entire community on the critical importance of education, gender equality, and capacity building in leading their own social transformation.
Kali was born in a tribal household in the remote village of Alirajpur in Madhya Pradesh, India. As a child, she contracted polio which left her disabled and in need of a staff to walk. Born a girl, poor, and disabled, she had three strikes against her before she was twelve.
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