From the category archives:

Development

Words, Images and Music

February 22, 2010

For a couple years now, I have been mulling over a project that combines photography and word, collected widely and presented in publishable form (kind of like this). This project has always taken a back seat to current realities, although a few people have heard the concept. At the core, it plays on the power [...]

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How to Spend It

February 17, 2010

Every so often, the FT includes this insert. I believe the WSJ does something similar. It’s entertaining, and a strange glimpse into a world I don’t know (50ft yachts and tennis bracelets).
Quick suggestion of how to spend that money? Try this.
I’m not anti-wealth, in fact I like it. I just feel there are some fantastic [...]

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Launch Week: Skoll Associate Fellows

February 12, 2010

Many times over the past couple years have I answered the questions: why an MBA, why Oxford?
Today’s launch of the Skoll Associate Fellows program indicates why I chose to come here. Recognizing that there was a large and and passionate social entrepreneurship community, far beyond just the Skoll Skollars, the Skoll Centre has kicked off [...]

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Launch Week: Saving Darfur

February 9, 2010

I’ve decided that this is Launch Week on Cashewman. Yesterday was Ethical Ocean, a new online store for ethically sourced goods. Check it out everyone! I sense this one has some nice moment already.
Today it’s Saving Darfur: Everyone’s Favorite African War, a book by journalist Rob Crilly. I’ve been following Rob’s blog and tweets for [...]

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Flashback to War Times

January 25, 2010

My mom found this newspaper recently. The date? September 8th, 1943. Italy had just quit WW2. But what is fascinating is the extent to which the war dominated the discourse. Through the newspaper there is virtually nothing that isn’t related to it somehow. Articles, war bonds, movies, comics, cigarettes, classifieds (remember those?): everything tied in [...]

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6 Great Development Blogs

January 18, 2010

No longer living in Ethiopia or Senegal, I’m not as tuned into the workings of on-the-ground development. Thankfully we have some good folks who keep us in the loop and help us learn more. Here are my favorites.
Blood and Milk. Alanna Shaikh writes all over the place, but her own Blood and Milk blog is [...]

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Phone Power

January 3, 2010

A powerful, reoccuring theme for me recently recently has been the growing importance of mobile technology. This is as profound a shift in many parts of the developing world as it is in the richer nations. Mobile adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa is ocurring at staggering rates. The International Telecommunications Union puts out a report each [...]

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Shot of the Day: The Rice Machine

December 11, 2009

Technology development and teting can be messy. But usually pretty fun stuff. Here we were trying to build a portable rice dehuller to process local rice in smaller villages, back in 2006 in Senegal. I was working with EnterpriseWorks, an organization that is particularly good at this type of thing. The idea was that entrepreneurs [...]

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Click advocacy: What is your click worth?

December 6, 2009

(Yep, this’ll take a few minutes to read. I promise it’ll probably be worth it. But if you don’t feel like it, here’s the 3 sentence summary: 1 Click-related advocacy has reduced engagement barriers farther than ever before. 2 This is good if it brings people onto an engagement ladder, or bad if it let’s [...]

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‘We need to educate them on…’

December 1, 2009

I’ve heard this used more than a few times.
I’ve heard it in development: ‘We just need to educate them on the benefits of clean water, then they’ll buy our pumps.’ ‘If only they’d understand how immunizations can help them be healthier, they’ll come in and get them.’
I’ve heard it in marketing: ‘We have a killer [...]

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