The two sides of Ed Sheeran’s development work

“White saviour”, “poverty porn”, “reinforcing negative stereotypes” have been some of the phrases thrown at Ed Sheeran in recent weeks after he ‘won’ the 2017 Rusty Radiator award handed out by Radi-Aid. This annual award, along with the Golden Radiator, highlights the very worst and best fundraising videos in international development. The judges criticise videos […]

I’m off

That’s right, I’m out of here. I’m taking 8 months off work and I’m going to see parts of the world I’ve never been to before, armed with my camera, pen and pad (ok, iPad). This decision has been a long time coming and to be honest I’m pretty nervous. I don’t know many 33 […]

Guest post: Living and working in rwanda; what’s it really like?

Rosie Coleman explains what she’s learnt from her travels and living in different part of Africa over the past year. Check out her previous blog on how travelling helped her with her career. I’ve now lived in Rwanda’s capital Kigali for 5 weeks and I’ve been working and travelling in Africa for nearly a year. […]

Guest post: How travelling helped me reflect on my career and decide what to do next

Rosie Coleman explains why she took time off to travel and how it helped her career. Make sure you check out the video about her first three weeks in southern Africa too. I’d never taken a gap year. My travels had been holidays rather than extended periods spent overseas. After graduating from LSE in 2013, […]

Guest post: My three months in Kumasi: what Ghana can teach the UK about innovation and entrepreneurship

Rosie Coleman has just returned from her work in Ghana as a Business Associate with Challenges Worldwide. Please do get in touch with her directly if you’d like to discuss future business opportunities either in the UK or overseas. I’d like to thank Rosie for allowing me to share her post and you can read […]

How to volunteer sensitively and be aware of power dynamics

Last week I spoke at the excellent ‘A refugee like me‘ conference run by the Wonder Foundation at The Baytree Centre. The two day conference, attended by young people from many countries including the UK, Sweden and Slovenia, was all about opening up discussions about refugees in the UK and practical advice about how to volunteer for […]

How to get in to the charity sector

I was recently asked to make a small contribution to Child.org‘s excellent Charity Apprentice programme by writing an article about how to get in to the charity sector. This course teaches young people both how charities work and how to do effective charity work. Applications for the January 2017 intake are now open so if you’re interested […]

Universities have a duty to stop promoting orphanage volunteering

This post was originally written by myself for the London School of Economics, who have full copyright. See the original post. At LSE we’re incredibly passionate about volunteering and the role that students play in changing the world for the better. Our most recent research shows that almost 50% of our undergraduates volunteer during their time […]

An interview with Ashish Thakkar

When invited to review Ashish Thakkar’s book, The Lion Awakes, I was also asked to do a Q&A with him about some of the topics that he explores in the book. Thank you to Ashish for taking the time to answer my questions so fully! How do you view the importance of aid versus trade (or […]

Review: ‘The Lion Awakes’, by Ashish Thakkar

Africa is home to six of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Collective GDP has now reached $2 trillion, up from $587 billion in 2000. 400,000 new companies were registered in 2014 and by 2040 Africa will have a larger workforce than China. These statistics, impressive as they are, only tell a small part of […]

Moving beyond giving

How are we going to create real change by 2030? How will we eradicate poverty, end gender inequality, stop climate change and achieve the other 14 Sustainable Development Goals when it’s expected to cost 5-10 trillion dollars a year to do so? These are the questions that Thomas Muirhead, Managing Director of Child.org, approaches in his TEDx Talk […]

Say it quietly, but things are getting better

It’s not easy living in a world with Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and the Daily Mail. Stick to those three and it would be easy to believe that life is getting worse every passing day and there is little hope for any of us. Look at the facts, however, and we’re told a different story. […]