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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 February 10, 2015
Eighteen GlobalWA organizations selected for 2015 Global Philanthropy Guide
By Mauricio Vivero
Trust matters, and when it breaks down, bad things happen. This plays out on many levels. We trust that police will protect, not harm, citizens. We trust our elected officials will act in our best interests. We trust that a coach will make the right call to lead our team to victory.
Trust is also critical in the world of philanthropy, especially when giving to causes and communities that are half a world away. Donors often cannot see the results of these investments firsthand, and the work happens in places that can be rife with corruption and political instability, where poverty is entrenched and its causes are complicated.
The world of global do-gooders is littered with high-profile flops, which further strains trust. Just last year, both Invisible Children, which created the wildly popular viral Kony 2012 video, and the Somaly Mam Foundation, named after the much-lauded campaigner against international sex trafficking, announced the end or radical downscaling of operations. These announcements followed very public criticisms of their claims and impact, and dramatic funding backlashes. Continue Reading
Posted on February 3, 2015
By Akhtar Badshah, PhD
Akhtar Badshah was presented the 2014 Global Hero Award by Global Washington founder Bill Clapp at GlobalWA’s 6th Annual Conference on December 3, 2014. Below is a full transcript of Akhtar’s acceptance speech.
Thank you very much for this recognition. I am very grateful for being called the Global Washington Hero – but I am no hero. I want to thank both Paula and Bill Clapp for their lifetime work in creating institutions that have had both direct impact and have also become centers of innovation that are being emulated by others.
I have been very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to work in the space of global development for the last 30 years – whether it has been in the early part of my career looking at cities, informal settlements, housing for the poor, and urban revitalization, which I reflected upon in my book Our Urban Future – New Paradigms for Equity and Sustainability; or when I started a social enterprise, and later heading Microsoft’s philanthropic programs. Continue Reading
Posted on January 26, 2015
By Kaitlin Marshall
January 12 marked five years since a magnitude-7.0 earthquake devastated Haiti. NGOs that work in Haiti used the anniversary as an opportunity to reflect on the disaster. While various organizations issued statements vowing to continue helping the Haitian people, many news outlets released grim reports regarding the island-nation’s recovery efforts.
In the media, Haiti has become a country defined by numbers. The earthquake killed an estimated 230,000-316,000 people, displaced an additional 1.5 million, and caused economic damage equivalent to 120% of the country’s GDP. Even more bleak figures were published on the five-year anniversary, including the reminder that an estimated 85,000 people still live in displacement camps. Continue Reading