The answer to this question is almost certainly ‘yes’. Any organisation that comes into contact with children directly or indirectly should have a child protection policy, including most organisations working in international development / aid, not just organisations that focus on children’s activities. Direct contact with children includes activities where children are …
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Got some time in the New Year and want to increase your knowledge and skills in a particular area? Here is a round-up of free online courses for international development / aid professionals that you can take anytime, anywhere. The courses, often called MOOCs (short for Massive Online Open Course), …
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I work at the bottom of the development food chain, on the ground where people benefit from the money that donors give. Some days I feel sorry for the donors because I see their money being wasted, stolen or misused. On other days I am frustrated by donor policies which make it very difficult to run …
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Ever since the Paris Declaration in 2005 “aligning with the national strategy” has become an important focus of international development / aid. There are many benefits to supporting the national strategy – it means that everyone is working towards the same goal (endorsed by the government), using similar activities, and avoiding duplication …
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There has been a proliferation of innovation-specific development funds in recent years, a trend that seems to have spread from the business world to the development / aid sector. Innovation has an important place in development, and in my experience the most effective innovation projects are the ones that make …
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Investing time and money into a website is a simple decision for a lot of organisations around the world, including NGOs based in high income economies (e.g. USA, UK, Australia, etc.). The benefits are less clear for organisations in low income countries, such as Malawi, where the costs of Internet …
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Coursera, a provider of online courses also called MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) , is running the free course Questionnaire Design for Social Surveys starting 6 October 2014. The course is being run by Frederick Conrad, Ph.D. and Frauke Kreuter, Ph.D., two professors from the University of Michigan. From the outline: This …
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Update: IDEO and +Acumen are partnering to offer a free online course on Human-Centered Design for Social Innovation Last year I did a free design course from the University of Pennsylvania. The course wasn’t specifically for international development – most of the practical exercises were on designing a new type of ice-cream scoop. …
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As the rest of the world is moving towards big data and cloud computing, so too is the development community. An Aid Information Management System (AIMS) is the latest buzzword for a piece of software that stores data on all your projects, budgets, activities and indicators. What can it do? AIMS come in …
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It used to be that finding national statistics was a time consuming business. You had to hunt through government reports, many of which were not available online, or were of dubious origin. You could spend days just trying to find a few numbers for the opening sentence of your proposal or presentation. These …
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