Read These 10 Things to Get Smarter About International Development

The spring 2016 Huddle for Global Change — a virtual conference I started to provide education and community for people who care about global progress — is taking place next week. In advance of that, I was compiling resources for attendees and since there’s some really good stuff, I’m sharing here.

There isn’t any scientific methodology to this list. I simply reached out to the Huddle speakers for their suggestions and looked back on stuff I’ve read over the past year and made a list of 10. The only requirement be that the items have been published within the last year. It’s not an exhaustive list by any means, but the thinking reflected in these articles and resources is quite diverse, covering a range of timely issues and perspectives.

  1. The Guardian: “This is a black conversation: give us the space to be heard” by Eliza Anyangwe. → Huddle speaker Jennifer Lentfer recommended this piece, noting that it explains why the idea of being a “voice for the voiceless” is fundamentally flawed. Bonus: Jennifer wrote a piece tackling the issue of racism in global development.
  2. The World Bank: “Evaluating Digital Citizen Engagement : A Practical Guide.” → Huddle speaker Linda Raftree suggested this resource. “There is a lot of hype around digital tools and mobile phones as a way of involving citizens in everything from aid accountability to corruption monitoring and reporting,” Raftree says. “This is a good framework for thinking through how to design digital civic engagement and how to measure the impact of these kinds of programs. The guide has links to a lot of other resources and is nicely designed.”
  3. The Globe and Mail: “Ground Zero” by Stephanie Nolen. This is one of the best deep dives on Zika with foreign correspondent par excellence Nolen reporting from Brazil.
  4. New York Times: “I Love the U.N., But It Is Failing” by Anthony Banbury. The op-ed highlights some common criticisms of the U.N. through Banbury’s eyes — based on his three decades with the organization.
  5. The Groundtruth Project: “The Syrian Refugee Crisis: How Did We Get Here?” by Charles M. Sennott and Kevin Douglas Grant. Accessible reporting and analysis on the actions and reactions that led to the Syrian refugee crisis.
  6. Dissent: “Oprah Is Not Your Friend: A Q&A with Nicole Aschoff” → Huddle speaker Tobias Denskus suggested Aschoff’s book (highlighted in the Q&A), noting that it is a “timely, critical, yet accessible reminder why philanthropists, celebrities and social enterprises will unlikely lead to global social transformation.” Denskus expounded on his thoughts on the book here.
  7. Politico: “The King and Queen of Haiti,” by Jonathan M. Katz, is a thorough and critical look at the Clintons’ foreign policy and development efforts in Haiti.
  8. Quartz: “Slacktivism is having a powerful real-world impact, new research shows” → another suggestion from Tobias Denskus who says he wouldn’t argue that “slacktivism” works, but the new research is noteworthy in that it “explains how a global, digital periphery is important for new social movements and protests.”
  9. Foreign Policy: “Can the Global Public Health System Learn From Its Ebola Mistakes?” by Laurie Garrett. The global public health community needs to use the aftermath of Ebola as an opportunity to enact substantial reforms, according to Garrett.
  10. Project Syndicate: “Entrepreneurship as a Diplomatic Tool” by Anne-Marie Slaughter and Elmira Bayrasli. The authors argue that entrepreneurship is a useful tool for stimulating progress in thorny global situations.
  11. BONUS! Green Money Journal: “Indigenous Rights: A Case Study in Bottom Up Social Metrics” → recommended by the author Rebecca Adamson who is also speaking at The Huddle. Rebecca describes how best to measure indigenous peoples’ rights — from the bottom up.

Please add your own recommendations. If you found this list interesting, I invite you to join The Huddle for Global Change. There’s still time to register for The Huddle, the virtual conference for smart, global doers.