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 June 12, 2013
By Anna Jensen-Clem
Global Washington, along with HUB Seattle, hosted its fourth Global Social this evening. The event, held monthly, brought together a diverse group of members, consultants, and individuals working in Kenya and East Africa.
Ellen Taussig, Executive Director of the International Leadership Academy of Ethiopia, spoke briefly about ILAE’s newest schools and projects. ILAE was founded by two members of the Ethiopian diaspora here in Seattle; both men had a “passionate concern and connection to their home country,” and both wanted to find a way to deepen their commitment to democracy and development at home. Democracy, Taussig said, “depends on great leaders, and great leaders are formed by great education.” Giving young people access to the best education means that they will be able to transcend international and cultural borders and become world citizens. Continue Reading
Posted on June 6, 2013
By Sara Veltkamp
Today’s Dr.’s in session was led by Kentaro Toyama, UC Berkeley researcher, on “Impact Evaluation for International Development”. Having recently done some data collection for a Global Washington members’ collective impact report, I attended the event as both a Global WA volunteer and as an interested party looking to get more information on the everyday strengths and weaknesses of current methods of evaluation used by global development organizations.
The session, which was the first part of a two-part series, used anonymized real-life examples to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of the average impact statement. Toyama used these examples to generate ideas from attendees about the criteria for impact evaluation to produce a credible, concrete assessment of development outcomes attributable to a particular intervention. Many of these criteria highlighted the importance of the current “Gold Standard” of impact evaluation tools, the randomized controlled trial (RCT). Toyama emphasized the importance of this method and its limitations as well as common misconceptions held about it. Continue Reading
Posted on May 14, 2013
Motivating individual donors: Building a loyal base of donors
By Anna Jensen-Clem
This afternoon’s wide-ranging discussion of fundraising came down to two basic (and opposing) points: a donor’s experience can be transactional or transformational. Your donors can give a one-time gift out of obligation or the desire to see an immediate return, or you can foster a long-term relationship with them and witness your organization transform their lives. Clearly, the latter is ideal, and better for everyone involved. Continue Reading