Development Diaries: Issues and Trends in International Development
Sustainability and Social Enterprise
In my last blog, I discussed the fertile time we are living in for what is called social enterprise, meaning new organizational forms that combine the best of business practice and socially-beneficial innovations. There are countless examples in all fields, from education to health care to agriculture, many deploying new technologies to achieve social goals.
This [...]
Tuesday, December 22, 2009 11:59:23 AM
Better, Bigger, Smarter: A Fertile Time for Innovation In the NGO World
Conferences are like speed-dating. You have a very short period of time with each of a number of brand-new people who may or may not have something to offer, and with whom you may or may not have any chemistry, but every now and then you get lucky and hook up with a real jewel.
October’s [...]
Monday, November 02, 2009 7:01:07 AM
Cash Poor, Oxygen Rich: Returning to America after Years in Hanoi
I’ve lived most of the past three years in Vietnam, which has allowed me the strange sensation of experiencing life back in America as a visitor, not a native. The last time I had this feeling was back in 1986, when I returned to the US after two and half years living in Africa.
First impressions: [...]
Thursday, September 17, 2009 6:05:06 PM
Hidden in Plain Sight
My wife and I stopped the other day at some hole-in-the-wall near our house for breakfast, a nice hot bowl of pho bo chin (beef soup with soft, flat rice noodles, served with brisket). We sat on small plastic chairs at plastic tables; at the next table were three white-bearded men eating, laughing, smoking and [...]
Tuesday, April 07, 2009 3:46:18 PM
Babes in the Woods
The Breath of Life (BOL) is an East Meets West program that provides neonatal equipment to hospitals in four countries – Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and East Timor. In effect, BOL creates neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) where none previously existed. Since most infant deaths occur from respiratory distress, a function of low birth weight and/or [...]
Tuesday, February 10, 2009 10:38:08 AM
Travel with a Cause: In the Field with East Meets West
Vietnam’s Coffee Culture (Not a Starbucks in Sight)
It’s Sunday morning and I’m hanging out, sipping my latte, and reading the International Herald Tribune at one of the Gloria Jean’s Coffee outlets in Saigon. The scene is familiar if you’re a coffee buff. There are some small tables and there are groupings of other more comfortable chairs in the corners of this fresh, [...]
Sunday, October 18, 2009 1:10:52 PM
Living Globally
If there was any doubt in my mind that we live in an interconnected global society, today would have expelled it. I woke up at 6am and turned on KPLU-FM, my local NPR station at home in Seattle. Here, it is streamed live and I get it via the website. At 6am here it is [...]
Saturday, October 17, 2009 1:36:21 PM
The Skyline Tells a Story
America was wrong about Vietnam in 1965. Now, no one seriously disputes the idea that the “American War” was a battle for independence. It was a civil war, but at the time American leadership was obsessed with the idea that the dominos would fall and all of Asia would be dominated by Mao and the [...]
Sunday, October 11, 2009 1:37:57 PM
They Are the Same the World Over
It doesn’t seem to matter where you are; a small group of drunks can poison the atmosphere of a place for everyone. Whether it’s a bar on San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley, an Upper East Side hangout in New York, a Berlin kneipe, or the Rooftop Bar in Saigon the effect is the same; it [...]
Saturday, October 10, 2009 1:38:46 PM
A Hard Dirt Floor and a Table with a Light
Today I visited one of the elementary schools where EMW provides scholarships to poor students. It was a modern, for this part of the world, school with attentive students and teachers. There are 800 students in the school, but only 34 of them are in the SPELL (Scholarship Program to Enhance Literacy and Learning) program. [...]
Friday, October 09, 2009 1:43:25 PM
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