Last Thursday I attended an event at U of T entitled "The Future of Aid: Our Shared Responsibility". It was put on by War Child Canada, who definitely seem to be the next "big" NGO on the block. It was an event which featured Dr. Samantha Nutt and a panel discussion with several big names in the world of development. The panel discussion was facilitated by Brian Stuart and also present were Biju Rao (economist for the World Bank), Ian Smilie (author of Freedom from Want), Sasha Lezhnev (co-founder of an American NGO called the Grassroots Reconciliation Group) and one other guy who must have been added last minute because there was no information on him in the literature. The last guy worked for the government of Chad if I remember correctly? But please correct me if I'm wrong.
The discussion was quite topical and covered many issues that my colleagues at I at Humber discuss on a daily basis: foreign investment (think China) and its effect on African development, voluntourism, the current economy and how it effects development work for us, etc.
This was almost a week ago now so I wish I remembered more about this panel discussion. The main three things I took away from this night were:
1) That I really should read Dr. Samantha Nutt's new book "Damned Nations", which is currently sitting on my night-side table. I will definitely be blogging about this book once I actually read it.
2) How strange it seems that of a two hour or so discussion on aid which mostly talked about Africa, there was only one African there to speak for his whole continent. His name and information were neither on the website nor program for the evening.
3) That although the guest of honour (Dr. Nutt) was female, she was GREATLY outnumbered by her male counterparts. Why is that not surprising? Wherever you find one successful woman, you find five successful men. It's just not right.
It's worth the read:
Should NGOs Take the Corporate Bait?
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