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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 July 28, 2014
By Gailyn Portelance
July 11 was World Population Day and no region of the world is feeling the impact of demographic change like sub-Saharan Africa. More than half of the growth predicted by 2050 is expected in this region, where the number of people is set to more than double, from 1.1 billion to 2.4 billion. Within the same period, Nigeria’s population is expected to surpass that of the United States. Of course, sub-Saharan Africa is not the only region to experience this phenomenon, as the most rapid increases are expected in the world’s 49 least developed countries1. However, what makes the region unique is the growth of its overwhelmingly young population.
According to the World Bank, 62 percent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, more than 600 million young people, is below the age of 25, and this population also represents three-fifths of the region’s unemployed. Its share of the world’s working-age population (ages 15-64) is set to double from about 10 percent in 2010 to about 20 percent in 2050 – to 1.22 billion people2.
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Posted on July 21, 2014
By Hannah Atlas
Kevin Klingbeil knows data. As managing director of Big Water Consulting, a Global Washington member, he works with a range of clients, from small non-profits to government agencies to tribal groups, to assist them with incorporating meaningful data and visual data mapping into their daily operations.
“Big Water Consulting seeks to provide long-term, capacity-building solutions, rather than one-off projects and quick fixes to systematic problems,” said Klingbeil. “We make concerted efforts to respect and embrace each of our clients’ organizational and cultural values to ensure the most advantageous and sustainable outcome.”
Klingbeil presented about data collection, utilization and presentation at Global Washington’s July Executive Director Roundtable. He started the conversation by asking, “How do you measure impact and define success in your organization?” Klingbeil asked this question so that he could get to the “how,” because he knows that it’s the “how” where many organizations fall short. He cautioned that relying on words or vague phrases like “dramatic improvement” or “meaningful” and “significant” as a means of conveying the reach of an organization could do more harm than good. That is why Klingbeil and his firm advocate for the use of data in an organization’s narrative to create an image that is honest and transparent. Continue Reading
Posted on July 14, 2014
By Dean Forbes
Most people know the big international anti-poverty organization Oxfam for its work on global food security and finding ways to feed the estimated 1 billion undernourished people on our planet. It brings its work on social justice, disaster relief and foreign aid reform to bear on this problem and others.
This November, Oxfam will add the broad topic of “inequality” to its global portfolio of initiatives that now includes agriculture; climate change; conflicts and disaster; health and education; and trade. Raymond C. Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America, gave a Seattle audience a brief, sneak preview of the new initiative at a reception for him and several Oxfam officials on July 7 while they were in town for Gates Foundation meetings. The reception was organized by Seattle-based Jonathan Scanlon, Senior Advocacy Advisor, Oxfam America, and cosponsored by Global Washington.
Offenheiser said much of the initiative on inequality will focus “on how do we ensure that future populations will have the same opportunities that many of us have for education, access to health, access to environmental services. There will be ample investments being made in many of these countries to enable them to have the chance to work their way out of poverty and to have the kind of social mobility that we have enjoyed in this country.”
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