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 March 7, 2017
In celebration of International Women’s Day, Global Washington hosted an event on March 1st to highlight member organizations that focus on empowering women worldwide, particularly through increasing access to land rights.
Katrin Wilde, the Executive Director from the Channel Foundation moderated the event and led the discussion among three strong women in our global development community: Kelly McDonald, the Director of Advancement at Agros International; Eileen Moncoeur, the Executive Director at Partners Asia; and Tzili Mor, the Director at Landesa Center for Women’s Land Rights. Continue Reading
Posted on February 23, 2017
On February 15th, 2017 Global Washington hosted a digital communications workshop in their fantastic new office space, shared with Seattle Foundation. Led by Joel Meyers of FuseIQ, along with Tyler LePard of Wondershop Communications and Amie Newman, writer/blogger for Our Bodies Ourselves, the attendees were treated to an information-packed session on creating digital storytelling for the greatest impact.
The essentials of best practices were covered: What are your objectives? Who is your audience? What is your message? How are you going to measure success? These are key questions for organizations to keep in mind while building out the details of their communications strategy.
In particular, when figuring out your messaging, have you done your homework and figured out who your audience is? Of course we’d love to have everyone know about and support us, but we need to be realistic and recognize that the more detailed we can be about who we’re trying to reach, the more successful we will be in creating content that they will be inspired to read and even act upon through some type of support of our organization. We must know what type of social media they use – remember to take a look at those Google analytics! And by being more specific, we can also remove unnecessary competition for our audience’s attention.
In order to build these relationship based on trust and respect with our audience, Tyler LePard recommends creating a journey map in order to get “inside the shoes” of those we are trying to reach. Once we have gotten their attention, what are you trying to get your audience to do? Using simple calls to action and great visuals are key.
As final takeaways workshop, attendees were encouraged to appeal to hearts, not minds (personal stories are more effective than facts), be creative and think boldly!
Posted on February 22, 2017
By Loree Bolin, Director, Health & Hope Foundation
When she married, Elizabeth Gabrieli’s husband paid 20 head of cattle for her wedding dowry. Raised in a remote village of Kyagata Mara Province of Tanzania, Elizabeth grew up helping her family keep goats and sheep. Elizabeth was born in 1955, on a different continent, one year after me. Our lives took different courses, yet today we work together empowering women in the community through the teaching of leadership and business skills.
When Elizabeth’s husband died she was left as the sole support for 6 children and her mother. Elizabeth supported the family through farming with the help of her children. As her circumstances improved she saved and invested in other businesses. Through the sales of baked goods, charcoal, vegetables such as tomatoes and onions, and homemade charcoal she supported her children and ensured their health and education.
Continue reading at https://healthandhopefoundation.org/elizabeth/