Let’s stop using the term “beneficiary” in global development and philanthropic work, and let’s stop asking local organizations to spend hours of their time gathering details to satisfy our expectations of ‘beneficiary metrics’. Why? 🫴🏽 The word ‘beneficiary’ implies a benevolent giver of charity, and a passive recipient. The concept erases the agency, insights, leadership, … Continue reading
“Traditional global development practices aren’t working. Despite substantial investments in development efforts over many years, many large projects initiated by traditional, top-down Global North philanthropic funders, international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and others have not resulted in meaningful and lasting change in communities. In some cases, there has even been unintentional harm done because of the disruption of … Continue reading
I was pleased to join the Early Childhood Development Action Networks’ webinar discussing how we can translate knowledge into policies and actions to benefit children’s early development, particularly at the more local level. “When we talk about translating knowledge into practice, the question for me is which knowledge and whose knowledge. We often distinguish between … Continue reading
In this chapter for Developmental Science and Sustainable Development Goals for Children and Youth, Amina Abubakar, Stanley Wechuli Wanjala, Patrick Nzivo Mwangala, Moses Kachama Nyongesa and I present community dialogues as a participatory research and program development strategy through which developmental scientists and local community partners can collaboratively surface, discuss, address, and evaluate child protection … Continue reading
How do you transform your troves of data into a story that fascinates people and moves them to act? This is an issue with which researchers, analysts, and evaluators grapple on an ongoing basis. Last week, I had the opportunity to learn and reflect on these very matters with colleagues working with data in the … Continue reading
Sadaf Shallwani 