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Hi all, It has been a busy week with quite a few bad news story from inside the #globaldev industry-ranging from WFP, to UNICEF UK, Amnesty & Tearfund-but on a brighter note there's a nice 'culture & development' section at the end of the first part that combines beauty with food for thought, eyes & ears. Enjoy! My quotes of the week Today, many NGOs have full-time proposal-production teams whose jobs depend on “win rates” - the number of successful bids they secure. They don’t need specialized technical expertise or experience because there’s the internet. Skilled writers read between the lines of each “Request for Proposals” to feed back winning language in a process some derisively characterize as “isomorphic mimicry.” That’s biological term for when a butterfly, for example, ends up looking like a moth so it doesn’t get eaten. You want gender? We do gender! You don’t want gender? Forget about it. As a gifted proposal writer once wrote to me about her work:“I