Observations:
Questions
The office was hell today: notifications kept flashing up, deadlines have already been missed, procrastination seemed to be the only option left. Is it actually that difficult to get work done, properly and meaningfully? What are we missing?
Observations:
Portfolio Approach
In development, there’s a strong shared feeling that business as usual doesn’t work anymore. More often than not, our solutions miss targets and break things further instead of fixing them. Baffled by the complexity of global challenges, development doers are left in despair.
Observations:
Contexts
How do we use contexts to interpret the world in a different way? How do we make sense of messy, tangled-up systems? How do we understand problems in the development sector and frame challenges that communities – and humanity as a whole – are facing?
Financing systems change
Portfolios help changemakers to shift from a logic of single-point interventions to one of interlinked, meaningful actions for communities – easing the path to long-term transformation. However, the appropriate funding needs to be granted, as a change in development processes is all but impossible if financing schemes remain conventional.
What’s the future of work in India? Job creation through entrepreneurship
What are the challenges and complexities facing India when it comes to the future of work? Kanika Verma and Shrashtant Patara from Development Alternatives, the world’s first social enterprise dedicated to sustainable development, share their experience with creating jobs through entrepreneurship, the system approach to development and the importance of self-actualization.
Daniel Everett on the enrichment to be gained from connecting with diversity
Back in the 1970s a linguist and missionary, Daniel Everett, arrived – along with his family – at the isolated Pirahã village in the Lowland Amazonia region. The purpose was clear: spending some time in the jungle, doing the missionary work of bringing the Christian God to the Pirahã people’s lives, and studying their language. But the tribe’s community, their language, behaviour towards one another, and way of perceiving time had a considerably more transformative effect on Everett’s life than he had on theirs.
