Blog
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 April 25, 2022
By Laura Baerwolf, Director of Operations, Mona Foundation
Family engagement activity led by MAIA mentor during home visit. Photo: Mona Foundation.
For the past 23 years, Mona Foundation has worked to alleviate global poverty through education, gender equality, and community transformation. We currently partner with 26 grassroots initiatives in 15 countries to educate and empower over 800,000 students in need, particularly women and girls. While it is widely accepted that investing $1 in education adds $10 in economic growth, in Mona’s experience, educating a girl multiplies this impact by 100. Educated women tend to marry at a later age, have fewer and healthier children, earn higher incomes, spend 90% on their families, and directly impact the development of their communities. All these factors help lift households out of poverty, benefit generations, and transform communities. Continue Reading
Posted on April 22, 2022
Earth Day, or International Mother Earth Day as it’s called in some counties, is celebrated each year on April 22nd and is celebrated in over 190 countries. Initially Earth Day was founded in 1970 through the efforts of US senator and environmental activists Gaylord Nelson as a protest of our deteriorating environment. According to World Economic Forum, “The Earth Day demonstrations [of 1970] left an indelible mark on US policy. By the end of 1970, the US Environmental Protection Agency came into being and a stream of laws followed to help protect the environment. These included the National Environmental Education Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the Clean Air Act. Further legislation was soon introduced to protect water quality, endangered species and to control the use of harmful chemicals and pesticides.”
Yet now the movement has built awareness and is a driver of action, for example joint demonstrations, projects and efforts to help protect the planet. Continue Reading
Posted on April 19, 2022
By Joceylne Tenkouano, buildOn Burkina Faso Country Director
Adult Literacy Program Participant Burkina Faso. Photo: buildOn.
For more than 30 years, buildOn has been constructing schools in economically developing countries with the aim of eradicating poverty and illiteracy by providing access to education. In 2014, buildOn opened its first offices in Burkina Faso and three important programs were implemented: School Construction; the Enroll program, which seeks to bring out-of-school children back to the classroom; and the Adult Literacy Program, which helps men and women learn basic literacy and math skills so they can develop income-generating activities. buildOn targets communities with the greatest needs in each country and works hand-in-hand with rural populations to build schools, and empower more children and adults to be literate. Continue Reading