WikiProject: International Development

Lately I’ve been getting really into how people are using Web 2.0 for global change.  I’ve been learning more about sites and projects from socially-conscious social networks (like TakingITGlobal, Change.org, and Razoo) to mashups for humanitarian crisis reporting (like Ushahidi and Sokwanele) to global blogging hubs (like Global Voices).

Today, while trying to find examples of international development academics who are using web 2.0 tools to gather research data, I came across this wikiproject on International Development.  At the moment, its more of an idea for a project than an actual project, but it aims to create “a powerful, practical and empowering resource which people everywhere can use to improve their own lives. Other people can also improve their understanding, whether they are involved in aid and development, or in politics, or in the broader public, thus raising awareness and understanding of the issues.”  The wiki nature of the project means that the template is there, but its still got to be filled in.  There’s a to-do list that users (ie, you and me) can take on parts of until the project is complete.  I’ve never contributed to a wiki but perhaps I might start.

In other news, I’m headed to the XVII International AIDS Conference in Mexico City this August and will be posting here during and after.  I was able to attend the last conference’s periphery (the Global Village) but not the sessions, so I’m very excited!

Beyond Good Intentions

Something I think about often is why people decide that they want to be involved in international issues.  What makes people get out their cheque book or attend a fundraising event?  And then the next question becomes what does this input from the average person do within development.  It seems to me that both questions are linked, with the why we give really affecting the impact of what we give.  For example, if we give a present, we hope that it’s something the recipient will love.  On the other hand, if we are making an investment, we want to be pretty sure that there will be a return.

I just learned about Beyond Good Intentions, a blog about what works in international aid.  Before even getting to the content, I was caught by the name.  There seems to be a huge emphasis on ‘aid effectiveness’ when it comes to governments giving grants to other governments.  But what about when individuals give?  If charity is passe for bilateral and multilateral donors (like Canada, or the World Bank), why isn’t it passe for individuals?  How do we think about our own individual ‘aid effectiveness’?

Vulture Capital

Catching up on some reading the other day I came across an article I’d flagged in October 2007’s The Atlantic on how to be a moral investor. I had some preconceived notions about conscientious investing, mostly along the lines of avoiding oil and weapons. Investments that avoid the social and environmental crises I learn about in school as much as possible. I must admit I was SO surprised (probably naively so) to realize that “moral investments” tend to be those that avoid contributions to the gaming, tobacco and alcohol industries. Clearly I should have known better and realized that morality lately is defined by the far right rather than the left. In my head, “morality” should go beyond our borders to include investments that affect humanity and environment on a world scale.

I’ve recently started learning about vulture capital, which seems to be a perfect example of immoral investment in my books.  I couldn’t believe that there was trade in Third World debt, that it is considered acceptable to loan shark on odious debt!  Interesting article in the Guardian  last October.

Ethiopian Nativity of Mary

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself at Mass at one of the Ethiopian Orthodox Churches here in Toronto, celebrating the Nativity of Mary. My legs were aching from the four-hour standing service, and my netella (traditional white headscarf) kept slipping off my head. While most Ethiopians have the stamina and dedication to stay standing still for many hours at a time, I joined the seated old ladies fairly early on. I had to crane my neck a little to follow the powerpoint presentation that translated the words of the priests and deacons from Ge’ez (the equivalent of Latin) into Amharic and English.

Here’s a brief clip of women praising Saint Mary during the procession after the service (please excuse my unsteady hand!):

My time in Ethiopia last year was a development-oriented trip, focused on the work of two dedicated NGOs in the field. But what I left the country with was a strong sense of Ethiopian culture, alongside the experience of poverty, and an interest in learning more. More specifically, my interest in Saints and their role in the lives of Ethiopian Christians is what brought me to this early morning service in the name of Mary. I’ve written about it from Ethiopia here and here.

In January, I began a research project with the help of Dr. Gervers in the History department to get a feel for the Ethiopian Saints, including their history, their doctrinal import, and most interestingly, their role in devotion and daily lives. The research has brought me into the Ethiopian community here, allowing me to participate in monthly meetings of Saints clubs, interview Archbishops and ordinary Ethiopians, and attend the celebration of feast days associated with a particular Saint.

Each time I attend one of these events or visit with someone from the community, I’m left with more questions than were answered and actively anticipate the next event. So, I’ve decided that the end of term won’t cut my project short. Which means I hope to see everyone at Meskel celebrations in September!

(sorry that I don’t have a steadier hand for filming, but hopefully this gives you a sense of the experience)

Toronto Does Social Change

When I finished school work for the degree that’s been my identity for the past six years late last month, I was pretty sure that everything would just come to a halt. I’d wake up leisurely and sip sangria on patios. In other words, that life as I know it would be replaced by summer vacation in the traditional sense. Well, it hasn’t, and I maintain a page long weekly to do list of responsibilities I have created myself rather than those imposed by UofT. It was kind of a relief to realize that it wasn’t the university that propped up my identity, and that I’m pretty much the same person attached to it or not. And luckily I don’t have to give up the perks of my student card quite yet!

One of the things I am trying to make time for is attending more events in Toronto that help me learn about various development-related issues. I started this week with Well, Well: an Evening of Dialogue on Social Change, a debate between Mark Kingwell (philosopher/writer) and Malcolm Gladwell (thinker/journalist). Like a snapshot of a chat these two men might have over a fast-food lunch, the talk only allowed them to skim the surface of their insight. Each gave a 15 minute talk on their view of social change in which Gladwell tore apart society’s reliance on awareness to create change and Kingwell spoke in depth on the vital role of empathy using, somewhat obscurely, the story of St. Paul’s conversion. They both agreed that the change came in the doing not the talking about, but the common ground ended there. As Gladwell said himself at some point, the two were trying to tackle completely different realms of reality, with Gladwell focusing on change that has happened lately, and Kingwell trying to sum up the universe. In the end, it was a bit silly to try to cover Social Change in an hour!

In stark contrast to the mainstream Well event, on Saturday night I went to the screening of Threads of Wrath. Directed by Emanuelle LaPierre-Fortin (a classmate from the development studies program at UofT), the movie worked to unpack the understandings of fairness in market relationships for cotton producers in Burkina Faso. LaPierr-Fortin’s explicit goal is to stay away from oversimplified understandings of fair trade, suggesting in her film that fairness goes beyond just a dollar figure. She reflects on the issue of “multiple oppressions,” avoiding a consumer-producer dichotomy and highlighting the different levels where unfairness occurs (locally, nationally, internationally). If you want to check it out, there’s one more screening on May 25th, 4-6 at the Centre for Social Innovation. The fair trade wine and chocolates alone are worth going for (or would have been had my current detox not prevented me from indulging).

Finally, on Sunday evening, I checked out Dilip Mehta’s film The Forgotten Woman that I missed during Hot Docs but is now playing at the Carleton. I’d seen Water when it first came out (by Dilip’s sister Deepa) and went into this one wondering how they would be different. Where Water is a stylized story of two women’s experience of widowhood with brighter colours and better looking love interests, The Forgotten Women is a broad survey of the situation of widows around India. Mehta seems careful to capture all angles, from widows in grinding poverty to the widows who lunch. All however, had experienced some degree of social alienation because of the death of their husbands.

This week? Contact (Toronto Photography Festival), Doors Open Toronto, and my first ROM walk.

Other Peoples’ Tomorrows

Just finished Dr. James Orbinski’s new book, An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action for the 21st Century.

For those of you who don’t know him, Orbinski is one of Canada’s global health heroes. He accepted the Nobel Prize for Doctors Without Borders while he was its international president and has since worked on developing MSF’s Access to Essential Medicine’s Campaign and establishing Dignitas International, an organization that provides community-based HIV/AIDS treatment in Malawi.

I’ve heard Orbinski speak a couple of times, including at the Hope in the Balance forum last November. His talks provoke the idea of thoughts and a world view constantly evolving. This makes him especially human, despite his almost super-human committment to justice and health. One of his strongest messages is the world’s need to create what he calls “humanitarian space,” unobstructed by politics and military. Orbinski’s experiences in Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and elsewhere have made clear the problems of military co-option of humanitarian action. The classic example is the dropping of both bombs and food packets within Afghanistan; in several cases children have confused the two and were harmed rather than fed.

Orbinski’s book is part memoir, part call to action. He takes the reader through some of the most devastating humanitarian disasters of the past 20-odd years, from the Rwandan Genocide to New York on September 11, 2001, when Orbinski worked in triage at Ground Zero. It struck me that on several occasions Orbinski has had a relationship with the countries he visits beyond their experience of humanitarian emergency, allowing him to describe the harsh differences between the time of acute crisis and normal daily life. For example, he worked in Rwanda doing HIV/AIDS research several years before the start of the 1994 genocide. This element helps him to challenge the perspective of African nations (and other developing countries) as places of perpetual crisis, while at the same time demanding action when that crisis does take place.

Books about global health and its personalities are compelling reads. For some reason they are more successful at keeping me riveted than Tipping Point or The DaVinci Code ever were. Perhaps it is because despite the complexities of humanitarian action that Orbinski describes, the moral action of healing the sick seems so much less ambiguous than the general project of development. However, as he describes his own quest to ask the right questions he deems necessary to improve “other peoples’ tomorrows,” Orbinski recognizes the political side of humanitarian action, and the need to speak up about what he has witnessed.

Unpacking Development on the Road

Heading off to Costa Rica for an Environmental Science Field Camp this week, I decided to write a few posts from in the field. I left Toronto for the hot summer weather and ¨la pura vida¨ in Costa Rica on Saturday. Being here in La Fortuna, sitting at the bottom of the 2nd most active volcano in the world, Arenal, I´m amazed at the development of the landscape in the area. The field instructor keeps telling us that when they started coming here in 1992, there were barely any hotels and little or no tourism happening in the area. Today, you can´t step around a corner without seeing a tourist souvenir shack or a trip planning place. Advertisements for ziplining, guided tours, etc are everywhere.

But all of this tourism isn´t even the most striking thing. From the moment I stepped off the plane in San Jose, there were ads for Condo sales everywhere. La Fortuna has become a mecca for condo dwellers with places being built in Talamanca at the hot springs, and all around the volcano. The thing is, Arenal could at any moment become active again and many of these tourist areas could be wiped out. So in a way it is like buying property with an expiration date.

Tourism is ever evolving and one has to wonder whether it is beneficial to the locals, environment. Is eco tourism, which is all the rage at the moment, especially here in Costa Rica with such a massive amount of bio diversity, a positive thing or just the newest fad. More on this and many other things from this travel blog next time! For now, I have to get back to enjoying a cerveza on our terrace while taking in the spectacular view of Arenal Volcano at night. Ciao!

Blogging on Development

I’ve been spending too much time reading other people’s blogs this week than posting, and have also been slightly distracted by something called finishing my degree! Anyway, I wanted to share these great blogs I’ve been reading lately. A lot of them focus on web 2.0 and Africa, but some have a more general focus:

White African

• Where Africa and Technology collide

…My Hear’s in Accra

• Ethan Zuckerman’s musings on Africa, international development and hacking the media.

AfricaBeat

• On the political and economic development of Africa and elsewhere by Jennifer Brea - a writer, aspiring political scientist, and Afro-optimist.

Hii Dunia

• A useful resource for articles on issues in International development, politics and current affairs.

Timbuktu Chronicles

• A view of Africa and Africans with a focus on entrepreneurship, innovation, technology, practical remedies and other self sustaining activities.

Hot Docs.

Tomorrow is the first day of Hot Docs here in Toronto, and this year I will finally make it to some of the screenings. As I made my online calender of must-sees today, I got excited about the opportunity to learn about Iran’s transgender community or maverick neurosurgery. My top two pics to watch are The Art Star and the Sudanese twins about controversial artist Vanessa Beecroft and her two adopted children, and Triage: Dr. James Orbinski’s Humanitarian Dilemma about the Nobel prize winner’s work with Doctors without Borders in Somalia and Rwanda. There are plenty of other development-related docs appearing, including two about HIV/AIDS (here and here), one about media and human rights in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and another about Central American migrants. There are a couple on Canadian community development issues as well: check out Bevel Up: Drugs, Users and Outreach Nursing.

What: Hot Docs When: April 17-24 Where: Around Toronto

Art and AIDS

When I read the Saturday Globe and Mail each week (and it usually takes me the whole week), I keep my eye out for stories on development issues. Yesterday, in the middle of the Globe Review, I came across this article about a Vancouver artist who is HIV positive. My immediate reaction was, “oh great! Something about development!” I clipped out the article and put it in my notebook and continued to wait for the Bathurst streetcar. Then it dawned on me: this guy probably doesn’t think of himself as a development issue.

Blame it on the fact that my thesis is due next Monday (my topic is how microeconomic development projects can reduce HIV risk), but when I think of HIV/AIDS, I don’t just think of it as an illness. In my head (and in the data), HIV/AIDS is inextricably entwined with poverty as both a cause and an effect. This understanding of the pandemic means yes, indeed, it is a development issue.

But what about when HIV/AIDS should be thought about in terms of health rather than development? I can’t speak for Mr. Kerr, but it seems that his status could be a result of a time when we didn’t know a lot about the disease rather than because of poverty and its side effects. I had to take a step back and realize that this article, though interesting, wasn’t about international development at all, but about an individual, his health, and his art.