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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 December 26, 2013
By Katie Wollstein
The 2013 Least Developed Countries Report was released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) on November 20, an annual, comprehensive summary of socio-economic data and analysis on the world’s most impoverished countries. According to the Committee for Development Policy, a subsidiary body of the UN Economic and Social Council, Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are identified using criteria including gross national income per capita, human assets index, economic vulnerability index, and population size (i.e., countries with populations exceeding 75 million are not eligible). In 2011, the CDP defined LCDs as, “Low-income countries suffering from the most severe structural impediments to sustainable development.” For a detailed description of the CDP process for identifying LDCs, see the Handbook on the Least Developed Country Category. Continue Reading
Posted on December 19, 2013
By Katie Wollstein
At the 2013 UN Climate Change Conference in November in Warsaw, Poland, Africa was urged to move toward sustainable development to adapt to climate change by exploring green economy initiatives. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) defines green economy initiatives (GEI) as initiatives that result in an economy that is low-carbon, resource efficient, and socially inclusive. These initiatives include components to provide analysis and policy support for investing in green sectors and addressing environmentally unfriendly ones. Of these sectors, agriculture was a hot topic for low-carbon development goals and food security in response to climate change. According to Henry Neufeldt, head of Climate Change Research at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), food production is responsible for between 9.5 and 14.7 gigatonnes of carbon in the atmosphere every year, 19 to 29 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions. Merlyn Van Voore, an adaption specialist with UNEP, said that climate-smart agriculture could potentially reduce greenhouse gas emissions by between 1 and 4 billion tonnes by 2020. Continue Reading
Posted on December 13, 2013
By Katie Wollstein
It’s winter break and many college students are plotting their next move after graduation. More school? Look for a job? Something to consider: in April 2012, the AP analyzed government data and found that about 1.5 million, or 53.6%, of bachelor’s degree-holders under the age of 25 were jobless or underemployed in 2011. According to a 2011 US Bureau of Labor statistics study, 13.5% of recent grads with a bachelor’s degree and 8.6% with an advanced degree were unemployed. (Note: “recent grads” refers to people ages 20 to 29 who completed degrees in the calendar year of the survey). The report was the first from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to publish labor force data specifically for recent college graduates and appeared in the February 2013 Monthly Labor Review. While the BLS report indicated that there is a general trend of lower unemployment rates with increasingly advanced college degrees, there is also evidence that recent college graduate unemployment rates vary by field (check out the stats in the Summer 2013 BLS report). Additionally, chasing an advanced degree is expensive and time-consuming. So, how do you decide if you should go for that advanced degree in global development?
The conundrum: if you don’t have any work experience, you won’t be qualified to advance professionally. On the other hand, if you have an advanced degree but not any work experience, you may hear that you’re overqualified for the entry-level job that could earn you precious experience. Kate Warren, director of global recruiting services at Devex, summed this up in her blog. “The result is those who go straight from undergrad to graduate school often find themselves stuck in a rough spot of being overqualified for entry-level positions but under qualified for mid-level positions.” To combat this, try a few years of work experience before graduate school. Continue Reading