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Dear white middle class British women: Please don't send used bras (or anything, really) to Africa

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I am supposed to be on my summer blogging break , but the world of bad development does not seem to take a vacation... The first time I came across the #SWEDOW (Stuff We Don't Want) debate about what to do with unwanted stuff and whether to send it to 'Africa' was in 2010; in fact, I wrote about a shoe donation project on the blog in 2012. Fast forward to July 2019 and a local British Women's Institute Facebook page with about 500 page likes is posting a picture of two innocent-looking parcels that has been shared very widely. The vast majority of the 500+ comments under the post are positive and I am sure that both charities will receive quite a few parcels in the next few days. It seems almost futile and pointing out bad examples of charity and development is not always the best way to communicate, but I anonymize the post as much as possible to avoid simply shaming a particular Women's Institute chapter. 'Rapey men here are the same as rapey men t
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Links & Contents I Liked 414

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Hi all, We welcomed almost 170 students to our ComDev courses this week, so the link review is a tad bit shorter than usual at the end of a long week...but from Afghanistan to Colombia, Mexico, Abu Dhabi, the UK, biometrics, the HR department & breast feeding we are visiting many contentious spaces around the globe... Enjoy! My quotes of the week We must also oppose the practice of the northern aid industry to consistently place themselves as the managers, implementers, intermediaries and monitors of aid, whether white or people of colour. (Racism doesn’t just exist within aid. It’s the structure the sector is built on) Insofar as keeping your staff happy makes sense for maintaining a productive and docile workforce, HR are our champions. But shorter hours, higher pay, more control? That’s not in the purview of a department with our employer’s interests at heart. (The HR department are not your friends) Development news How elite US institutions created Afghanistan’s neoliberal Pre
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Links & Contents I Liked 415

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Hi all, Just when I thought 'well, looks like one of those normal weeks featuring saving philanthropy, Australia being a dick, digital #globaldev being complicated & more staggering numbers of the cost of forever-wars', someone decided to launch an actual reality TV show where activists compete against each other for social media traffic so they can win a competition & attend a global summit...you can't even meme stuff like this anymore... My quotes of the week Activists go head-to-head in challenges to promote their causes, with their success measured via online engagement, social metrics, and hosts’ input. The three teams have one ultimate goal: to create impactful movements that amplify their message, drive action, and advance them to the G20 Summit in Rome, Italy. There, they will meet with world leaders in the hope of securing funding and awareness for their causes. (Usher, Priyanka Chopra & Julianne Hough Set For ‘The Activist’, CBS Competition Series From
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Links & Contents I Liked 412

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Hi all, It feels like a lifetime since I posted my last weekly update with all the terrible news that is coming in from Afghanistan, Haiti & so many other places around the globe. The semester hasn't even started I feel more tired & inadequate engaging with our wonderful students over #globaldev questions than I can remember... My quotes of the week The honest answer to the question ‘Is research being used’? is probably “some of it, sometimes…we think.” Is that really good enough? (Is the humanitarian sector really using research evidence?) Recognizing the existence of working people on great estates helped to shore up the idea of the country houses as places of shared memory. “Yes, we acknowledge that there are tensions . . . but, ultimately, everyone was on board, because class could be assimilated into the project of Englishness, right?” Priyamvada Gopal (...) said. “Race doesn’t allow that.” The spoils of enslavement and colonial power, and how they were fashioned into
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Links & Contents I Liked 413

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Hi all,  We made it through another week & a great photo essay on outdoor women in Canada & a speculative humanitarian fiction story could help to take off your mind for a little bit, but we also must not forget Madagascar or Haiti & how language matters when we talk about #globaldev! My quotes of the week Nearly all respondents said they had attended large humanitarian gatherings attended by staff from international and local agencies. Did these encounters produce feelings of solidarity? No. (Power & solidarity in humanitarian governance – what aid workers really think) My biggest tip is to think about who has power and agency and ask yourself: are you using language that amplifies the power and worth of the people your work is supposedly done in service to, or is it taking away that power? (Devspeak: are the words we use doing more harm than good?) Maintaining the drug war thus reinforces the idea that Indigenous peoples are secondary; that the pain and suffering t
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