Archive for the ‘Aid’ Category
Who should decide how aid is used?
Tom over at aviewfromthecave and I have been having a bit of blog banter over the last 24 hours, sparked by a Washington Post article about a do-good couple giving bikes to kids in Tanzania. Tom’s critique of the article, with some very salient points journalists who cover foreign aid should keep in mind, is [...]
The alleged power of one
Tom over at aviewfromthecave offers a critique of a recent Washington Post article about a couple, the Hughses, who went on safari in Tanzania and then decided to start a bike charity for residents of Karatu, a village near the safari site where the couple stopped at a local school and learned the kinds of things [...]
Whither aid dollars? And who can help me find out?
This post is actually a request for help. I’m in Sierra Leone, with crap bandwidth and a lot of statistical information I want to gather. I hardly know where to look. But I have noticed that the people who read this blog are cracker-jack smart, I’m hoping some of you might be able to point [...]
Things that are worth your time
Adam Hocschild’s article from Congo, about mining, which I blogged about earlier, is online. Read it. Amazing.
“Africa to Appalachia,” Jayme Stone’s collaboration with kora player Mansa Sissoko. I’ve been listening to it on and off since it came out, but in the past few weeks, I’ve been really listening to it. It’s incredible. (So, too, [...]
Creepiest Google searcher ever, and a confidentiality conundrum
Like a lot of bloggers, weird Google search terms will send people my way. I used the word “thighs” in a blog headline once, and now every week I get a few people who I’m pretty sure are just looking for porn. Awesome.
But here’s a Google search term that’s also a reminder of how important [...]
Farm aid from space
This is the title of my newest Christian Science Monitor article, which is actually about weather-indexed insurance programs in sub-Saharan Africa. All kinds of cool science-and-tech stuff has come together in the last five years to allow big insurance companies to offer super-small insurance policies — low-premiums, comparatively low-payout, to the usually poor, always vulnerable [...]
I am a freelance journalist and multimedia producer who covers human rights, Africa and foreign affairs. [