The global development sector is grappling with how to walk the talk on localization. USAID has grabbed the headlines, after Administrator Samantha Power pledged in 2021 that 25% of all…
Connie K Chung, EdD, Vishal Talreja, and Dream A Dream
November 29, 2022
This book is about the graduates of Dream a Dream. It centres on moving, personal stories of young people and what it means to grow up with adversity and thrive.…
Our international rules-based order through which the world’s nations pursue global peace and development is crashing into the limits of its founding vision. What our predecessors built some eight decades…
Desde la historia de nuestros países tendríamos dificultades para relacionarnos. Nos separan el océano atlántico y la forma como se cuenta la historia de cada lado. En España, la conquista…
World Innovation Summit for Education
June 3, 2022
This WISE ALL-IN special publication bears witness to the critical role of leadership in promoting and enabling student and system-deep learning. The collection reveals the centrality of education leadership in…
Locally led development is a complex process that the development community, in the United States and around the world, has spent several decades trying to get right. Yet, despite all…
Zia Khan, John McArthur, Jamie Drummond & Kennedy Odede
January 25, 2022
In this sixteenth interview of the “17 Rooms” podcast, Jamie Drummond and Kennedy Odede discuss shifts in power, process, and funding to uplift proximate leaders and value local knowledge and…
The COVID-19 pandemic has vividly demonstrated that thoughtful, data-driven, and accountable leadership has been a significant determinant of the trajectory of this emergency – locally, nationally, and globally. The current…
Dzingai Mutumbuka & Vongai Nyahunzvi
July 29, 2021
Growing up in Zimbabwe, “wakangwara semurungu,” a Shona phrase that means “wise white person,” was a typical compliment given if you did well in school or looked particularly chic —…
Can philanthropy deliver what is expected? Much has been written about the role philanthropy could play in resetting our fractured and extraordinarily polarised modern world. However, there are disagreements about…
Over the last few years, the Black Lives Matter Movement and #AIDToo scandals have ushered in a period of self-reflection in the humanitarian sector and elevated calls to “decolonize” its…
Two 5am starts followed by 16 hours of screen time. Yet by the end of the 2021 Humanitarian Leadership Conference, ‘energised’ was the word I used to sum up my…
The theme of this edition of Humanitarian Exchange is localisation and local humanitarian action. Five years ago this week, donors, United Nations (UN) agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the International Committee…
If the world is going to stop deliberate or unintentional misinformation and its insidious effects, we need to radically expand and accelerate our counterattacks, particularly human-centered solutions focused on improving…
In April 2021, more than 1000 delegates from across 80 countries came together at the Humanitarian Leadership Conference to determine where change is needed in the aid sector and what…
In November 2020, Peace Direct, Adeso, the Alliance for Peacebuilding, and Women of Color Advancing Peace and Security held a three-day online consultation with 158 activists, decisionmakers, academics, journalists and…
Africa is very rich in natural resources and has the youngest population of any continent. If we can make the most of this abundance, we can create shared prosperity on…
European School of Governance, position paper #25 by Louis Klein | Community-based learning ecosystems lie at the very heart of our understanding of the world, of its being and of…
This year one in every 33 people across the world will need humanitarian assistance. That is a rise of 40% from last year, according to the UN. More than half of the…
The international development community needs to shift its approach from intervening to solve problems to developing local leadership; People in developing contexts should be encouraged and given the skills to…
By all accounts, 2020 was a watershed year for the term “systemic inequity.” It burst onto the scene amidst pandemic and protest, showing up in public conversations across a range…
Most people assume that inequality between the global South and the global North (the United States, Western Europe, Japan, Canada and Australia) has been declining over the past few decades.…
Just imagine, looking back to a time when COVID-19 brought us together. Leaders who united to overcome a health crisis also gained the courage to avert climate catastrophe. The unstoppable…
Wherever we have seen community resilience in the face of the public health, economic, and education crises of 2020, we find strong local leadership at work. However, rather than supporting…
“What would it look like if we decided to find and fund local organizations applying themselves to bringing value to their communities?” It was a sunny summer day in 2012,…
I was in Kibera, Africa’s largest slum, when I heard about the shooting of another black man, Jacob Blake, by US police. Close by is a mural of George Floyd, painted on a…
As events unfold in the US and across the world, colleagues in the aid sector are closely watching, and sharing their solidarity. After all they are allies and educators of…
Who would have thought Americans would be nostalgic for a week ago? Today I woke wishing that all we were managing was a global pandemic, more than 100,000 deaths in…
Cheryl Dorsey, Jeff Bradach, and Peter Kim
May 1, 2020
For more than a decade Morgan Dixon and Vanessa Garrison have been working to mobilize Black women to improve their health one step at a time, literally. In 2010 the…
What the world witnessed last week in America is not new. George Floyd, another African American man killed by police. Over one hundred uprisings in cities around the country to…
This letter is the product of a protracted, heated, angry and passionate discussion that took place on the #ShiftThePower WhatsApp group last week. Several people on the group had been…
Between our broken global economic model, rising inequality, and the erosion of democracy and human rights, we are living in a time of crisis. But there are, in times of…
As I begin my third year at the Ford Foundation’s helm, I am reminded of how privileged I am—and we all are—to serve this institution. For my colleagues and me,…